Chinese children who grow up speaking putonghua use pinyin to associate characters with spoken words. Those who grow up with other languages also use it as a guide to putonghua pronunciation.

Add spelling to these Chinese words.

"Pinyin is not to replace Chinese characters; it is a help to Chinese characters, " Zhou says.

But many students forget pinyin once they have reached their ultimate goal.

Chinese boffins say that character amnesia happens because most Chinese people use electronic input systems based on Pinyin, which translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet.