http://www.bjshengr.com/bjs/2008/08/a-structured-approach-to-chinglish-pronunciation-2-of-2/#comment-3137

First, it is not the case of only. There is a language in 丽江、云南 called Dongba language which uses a more pictographic character system.
Second, the Chinese language does refuse to use an alphabetal system completely. Instead, it employs them as an affiliation to its own system, which is known as Pinyin, thanks to which we Chinese today can not only keep pace with the modern world but remain closely connected to our ancestors. I have been reading a book named 山海经 directly, which was written at least 3000 thousand years ago by our ancestors.
Generally speaking, Chiness characters and Dongba characters don’t refuse to use alphabets for the sake of refusal but because they feel and have proved it UNNECESSARY TO DO SO.

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Thanks for the little list of hanzified English syllables. That’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about in Question 1. That’s got to be written down somewhere because it seems to be consistently used. Why should we go to all the trouble when it’s already been done? Now…if we only knew how to find it.

Randy,

Great off-the-cuff rendering of the English alphabet in pinyin. That’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about in Question 2. But, again, that’s got to be written down somewhere too, right? How do we get our hands on these things?

Jim,

All I mean is: as long as we’re saying “China” (and not “Zhongguo”) when we speak English, then don’t they get to say “Niuyue” instead of “New York” when they’re speaking Chinese?

When used to form bullet point lists like the English:
(a)
(b)
(c)
…

I’ve seen the Chinese use:
(啊)
(啵)
(次)
(的)
(饿)
(佛)
(哥)
(喝)
(一)
…

However this isn’t very useful for transliteration of names.

Translated names often have the same characters so there must be some standard for transliterating. Maybe we can decipher it from examples. It’s not going to depend on single letters tho, like a character for the alphabet letter ‘l’ etc. It’s a combination of English letters that relate to a Chinese character. For example if the English name contains the letter span ‘lan’ then the Chinese is 兰.
Examples:

lan/land -> 兰
b -> 布 (blair:布莱尔，bush=布什,brad=布拉德—)
s -> 斯
r/er/el/le -> 尔
t -> 特
ma -> 吗
k -> 克
a -> 亚
an -> 安
na -> 那
ph -> 菲
he -> 荷
gl -> 格
la -> 拉
d -> 德
etc…

Just have to make a list like this for every possible syllable in the English language! (every combination of 1-3 English letters)

There are actually two things. One is something you can find in the back of any Chinese dictionary, but it’s pre-pinyin (and therefore not really expressible in pinyin). The roman letters are given “names” in zhuyin fuhao (the Taiwanese bopomofo system [well, Taiwanese because they still use it]). The thing I’m sure I saw in a textbook was a pinyinized approximation of this.

But that’s not what newscasters are using when they pronounce English (etc) initials.

The reporters use a pinyinized system which I’ve never seen written down, but I’ll try to give you here from memory based on what I hear over the radio and from people spelling things to each other. Bear in mind that there is some variation in what people say.

ei, bi, xi, di, yi, aifu, ji, eiqu, ai, zhei, kei, ailu, aimu, en, ou, pi, qiu, a, aisi, ti, you, wei, dabuliu, aikesi, wai, zei

I also hear people say kiu (or kiur) for q, but that’s not standard pinyin. Also aichi for h.

Hope that helps a bit. : )