Old National Pronunciation

The Old National Pronunciation (traditional Chinese: 老國音; simplified Chinese: 老国音; pinyin: Lǎo guóyīn; Wade–Giles: Lao³ kuo²-yin¹) was the system established for the phonology of standard Chinese as decided by the Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation from 1913 onwards, and published in the 1919 edition of the Guoyin Zidian (國音字典, "National Pronunciation Dictionary"). A revised edition was published in February 1921. Although it was mainly based on the phonology of the Beijing dialect, it was also influenced by historical forms of northern Mandarin as well as other varieties of Mandarin and even some varieties of Wu Chinese.

The artificial nature of the system proved impractical, and in 1926 a decision was made to normalize the pronunciations to the natural pronunciations found in Beijing, which resulted in a revised Guóyīn Chángyòng Zìhuì (國音常用字匯, "Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use") published in 1932.