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Zhuyin ( sometimes called Bopomofo ) is a semi-syllabary used to phonetically transcribe Mandarin Chinese in the Republic of China.

After the later establishment of the People's Republic of China and its adoption of Hanyu Pinyin, the use of Zhuyin today is limited, but it's still widely used in Taiwan where the Republic of China still governs.

Zhuyin developed out of a form of Chinese shorthand based on Chinese characters in the early 1900s and has elements of both an alphabet and a syllabary.

Like an alphabet the phonemes of syllable initials are represented by individual symbols, but like a syllabary the phonemes of the syllable finals are not ; rather, each possible final ( excluding the medial glide ) is represented by its own symbol.

For example, luan is represented as ㄌㄨㄢ ( l-u-an ), where the last symbol ㄢ represents the entire final-an.

While Zhuyin is not used as a mainstream writing system, it is still often used in ways similar to a romanization system — that is, for aiding in pronunciation and as an input method for Chinese characters on computers and cellphones.