How do you spell book in Chinese?

Chinese, unlike Western languages like English, French, and German, does not have an alphabet. Instead, it has something known as a "character system" that is composed of thousands of different symbols (known as characters) that each have a different pronunciation. So, rather than spelling, Chinese write characters. The Chinese Word for "books" is 書. This is pronounced "shu1" in Hanyu Pinyin and "shu" in Gwoyeu Romatzyh.