Pinyin Pronunciation

This lesson shows the pronunciation of pinyin, the standard Romanization system used for Mandarin Chinese and the one that will be used throughout the textbook. While most of the letters are the same or very close to the English usage, there are some important differences.

Pronunciation Basics

Mandarin Chinese may sound strange, but is actually relatively easy for English speakers to pick up—much easier than it is for Mandarin-speakers to learn English. A large part of the reason is that Chinese has a very limited sound inventory, meaning there are not many sounds in the language, and hardly any new ones if you already know English. On the other hand, that means Chinese-speakers trying to grasp English must learn to produce dozens of entirely new sounds—remember that as you proceed through these first lessons on pronunciation!

One very different aspect of Chinese is its use of tones. Because of its limited sound inventory, the pitch, also known as the tone or inflection, is used to help differentiate between words. Words with different tones usually have entirely different meanings, but may have the same base with different radicals. While some dialects of Chinese have up to nine tones, Mandarin is comparatively easy with only four. It's often difficult for beginners to distinguish the tone of a word, especially when not sure of the context, people who do not speak a tonal language are not used to listening for pitch in conversation. Speaking Chinese is like singing, but even if you have perfect pitch, it may be hard to follow or reproduce what seems like a roller coaster ride of tonal transitions. Don't worry though, you'll improve by listening and practicing. These lessons will describe how to understand and reproduce all the syllables and tones of Mandarin.

If you know another Romanization system or the IPA

If you are familiar with Zhuyin (bopomofo), Tongyong Pinyin, or the Wade-Giles system of Romanization, Wikipedia has an equivalency chart comparing the different systems.

Hanyu Pinyin is the most common Romanization system for Chinese, which will be used for the rest of the text. However, you may find Tongyong Pinyin and Zhuyin helpful in understanding the correct pronunciation, as they treat exceptions to initial-final combinations in syllables differently (see below).

The IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet, is a standard set of symbols that can be used to write any sound from any human language. The sounds of pinyin will be listed on the next pages in IPA.

The Mandarin syllable

There are three parts to all syllables in Mandarin; the initial, the final, and the tone. In pinyin, the tone, initial, and final are represented as follows:

Tone

The tone is represented by a tone mark placed on top of the syllable. There are exactly four tone marks: ˉ, ˊ, ˇ, and ˋ. The two dots on ü (like a German umlaut) do not have to do with the tone, so if you see ǖ, ǘ, ǚ, or ǜ, the symbol above the dots represents the tone.

Initial

The initial is...

• in the beginning of a syllable
• a consonant (excluding y, or w)
• usually one letter, except for zh, ch, sh

Final

The final is made up of the letter(s) after a syllable's initial, not including the tone mark. A final...

• begins with a vowel
• can be made of 1-4 characters
• ends with a vowel, n, ng, or r

For example: in duàn, d is the initial, uan is the final, and ˋ is the tone.

Exceptions to initial-final combinations in syllables

Some syllables have no initial or no final. In Pinyin, this is shown as follows:

• For syllables with no final:
  • an unpronounced i is added to the end of the syllable
  • Occurs only with the following initials:zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s
• For syllables with no initial:
  • if the final begins with an i, it is replaced with a y
  • if the final begins with an u, it is replaced with a w
  • if the final begins with an ü, it is replaced with yu
  • Exceptions:
    • i alone is replaced by yi, in is replaced by yin, ing is replaced by ying;
      • iu is replaced by you.
    • u alone is replaced by wu;
      • ui is replaced by wei, un is replaced by wen, ueng is replaced by weng.

One other exception:

• when combined with initials j, q, x; any ü in a final is changed to u.

If that looks intimidating, don't sweat it. The next few pages will give some actual examples of how initials and finals are pronounced, put together, and how to use tones.