8. A system, as in claim 1, where one or more of the syllable string codes represents an abbreviation of the associated syllable string.
1. A computer system for processing Chinese language text comprising: a computer memory; an input apparatus for entering a plurality of Chinese phonetic language syllables into the system, each syllable having one or more characters, the input apparatus marking one or more of the accented syllables with diacritic that indicates a tone of the accented syllable; an input unit that provides a character code for each character and a tone code for each diacritic entered by the input apparatus, the input unit recognizing a syllable as a string of character codes marked by tone code; a syllable list having a plurality of syllable strings, each syllable string being associated with one or more syllable string codes, the input unit matching the string of character codes marked by the diacritic code to one of the syllable string codes and storing in the computer memory a syllable representation for the syllable string associated with the syllable string code that matches the string of character codes marked by the tone code.