[jason_slack]

I am taking Mandarin classes and our textbook has both pinyin and characters for almost everything. There is always a section in each chapter that is entirely in characters.

I have been buying books on Amazon to help accelerate my reading. I need a story to follow along with. These book indeed do not have any pinyin.

Pinyin is fascinating to think about. Sometimes words are created from pinyin when you say them. Example: New York is Niǔyuē (纽约). Another is how in English we say "ha, ha". In pinyin it has been adopted exactly that way: Hāhā (哈哈).