Chinese Pinyin Guide
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In 1950's, the Chinese government introduced a new form of written Mandarin known as "Pinyin" to help those who wants to learn Mandarin. Now it has been officially recognized in China, Singapore, and the US library of Congress and the American Library Association. With the introduction of "Pinyin" as a simplified form of Mandarin, you can learn Chinese new words by yourself from just a book instead of sitting down for hours doing repetitive exercises. Pinyin, which is used in the pronunciation of Chinese characters, should constitute the very first step toward learning the Chinese language effectively.
Pinyin and Pinyin Syllable Pinyin is just a standard system of romanized spelling for transcribing the pronunciations of Chinese characters. Here is an instance, if you want to write "hello" in Pinyin, you can simply write it as follows "nǐ -hǎo". In general, Chinese language consists of Pinyin syllable words, which are composed of one, two or more characters. Each one Pinyin Syllable stands for the pronunciation of one character, like: You are good friends.
你-们-是-好-朋-友. -men-shì-hǎo-péng-yǒu. nǐ -men-
Pinyin Syllable = initial + final + tone For example: the pinyin for the character 你 (You) is "nǐ", where "n" is the initial and "i" "i " is the final, and the symbol
"ˇ" over "i" is the tone. It's pronounced like "nee"
The Initials and the Finals Pinyin consists of 2 categories of sounds, which are called "the initials and the finals". The initials are more like the consonants and the finals are more like the vowels. Initials just like the name suggests, comes in the beginning of words. Overall, there are about 21 initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, z, c, c , s, zh, ch, sh, r, y, y, w On the other hand, there are 24 finals in total: a, o, e, I, u, ü, ai, ei, ui, ie, ou, uo, ui, üe, er, an, en, in, un, ün, ang, eng, ing, ong Here is a Pinyin Chart which is a combination of initials and finals: Pinyin Chart
The Four Tones of Pinyin The first tone which is a flat tone: ā The second tone which is a rising tone: á
The third tone which is a falling rising tone: ă The fourth tone which is a falling tone: à Another important aspect of Pinyin is understanding that individual sound in Pinyin does not always sound the MCL Academy: 3727 W 6th Street, Suite 603, Los Angeles, CA 90020 Tel: (213) 806-0128 Email:
[email protected] Website: www.mastersofchinesela.com
same as in the English language. For instance; the character "c" is pronounced in Pinyin as "ts" in bits.
Reference between Pinyin and English Pronunciation The best way to learn Pinyin sounds is by using a chart that relates the sounds to English characters. This way, you can associate each sound to the familiar English characters and use them as an anchor to remember the sounds whenever you forget them. Here is a link of "Reference between Pinyin and English Pronunciation" Pronunciation ". What you need to do now is to get an experienced teacher, listening carefully to the sounds and religiously mimicking them. Keep practicing, you can give yourself a chance to be able to finally cement these sounds in your mind.
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MCL Academy: 3727 W 6th Street, Suite 603, Los Angeles, CA 90020 Tel: (213) 806-0128 Email:
[email protected] Website: www.mastersofchinesela.com
