[musicale]

Phonetic alphabets (e.g. pinyin) are used by learners as well as in computer input methods.

Moreover, some 80% of Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic hybrids (though the pronunciation of characters that share a phonetic element may not be identical in current Mandarin, they will often resemble each other closely, perhaps with a tone or vowel shift.) Learning characters in phonetic groups helps to anchor their pronunciation and phonetic elements can help when you encounter an unfamiliar character in context.