It is beyond all doubt that mandarin is used as a mother tongue by the most people accounting for about one fifth of the world's population. Students are often taught mandarin as ' Yuwen' in their schoolbooks. Mandarin is shaped and based on the Beijing dialect and other dialects spoken in the northern areas of China. In Taiwan Province and Hong Kong, it is called ' Guoyu' while in Singapore and Malaysia, it is often called ' Huayu'. It is the common language of all modern Han nationality people. Putonghua is a parlance in mainland China. The official language of China is the Mandarin, which is the very name of ' Hanyu' or ' Putonghua', belonging to Sino-Tibetan. They are then written with a “y” at the beginning, namely: “yi”, “ya”, “ye”, “yao”, “you”, “yan”, “yang”, “yin”, “ying”, “yong”, “yu”, “yue”, yuan”, “yun”.As one of the six official languages used by UN (United Nations), Chinese now has earned itself greater status in the World. i, -ia, -ie, -iao, -iu, -ian, -iang, -in, -ing, -iong, -ü, -üe, -üan, -ün can also go as stand-alone syllables. Or, remember the French “ü” sound – it’s similar. Try putting your lips in the position of Chinese “u” and your tongue in the position of Chinese “i”. The “ong” final with the “y” sound in front. You know the word “ping pong”? Then you got the sound! The “ang” final with the “y” sound in front”. The “ao” final with the “y” sound in front. We also have two more syllables: “wen” which is pronounced as “when”, and “weng”, which is simply the “-eng” final with a “u” sound at the beginning. Then they are written with a “w” at the beginning: “wu”, “wa”, “wo”, “wai”, “wei”, “wan”, “wang”. Similar to “one”, but with a “ng” sound at the end.īy the way, –u, -ua, -uo, -uai, -uei, -uan, -uang can also be syllables on their own. Join the Chinese “e” sound with the “ng” in “thing”.Ī “oo” in “book” joined with “ng” in “thing”.Īn “oo” sound in “book” followed by an “o” sound in “log”. More or less like “ung” in “stung”, but the vowel sound is longer. More or less like “un” in “fun”, but the vowel sound is longer. Or, if you are familiar with Russian, it’s close to the sound “ы”. Similar to “ee” in “see”, except after z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, r: after those initials, to pronounce –i, simply say the initial and extend it – you’ll get the sound you need. [A diagram would work well here, much like here: Try saying the English “d” combined with an “s” and then “ee”. Much like the English “j” in “jeep”, but much softer. It’s a combination of American “r” (as in “rug”) and “s” (as in “measure”). It always has the quality of “au” in “laugh” (but is a little more open), never “a” in “man”. Similar to the English “t”, but aspirated. Similar to the English “p”, but it’s aspirated – meaning that when saying this sound, you have to breathe out some air. They are pronounced more or less like their English equivalents. Here’s a table with all the possible syllables:ĭon’t worry too much about these initials. Not all initials can be combined with all finals. Please note that given English equivalents are only approximate. Pinyin is the official system in the PRC and is recognized internationally. It’s a system called hanyu pinyin – it’s one of several ways to represent Chinese sounds using Latin alphabet. In this course, words are often written using Latin letters. Most words consist of two syllables, although there are also words that consist of one or more than two syllables. One important thing to know is that a “syllable” does not equal “word”.
#MANDARIN CHARACTERS FOR WORD 15.29 HOW TO#
Which means that if you know how to pronounce all the “initials” and the “finals”, you know how to pronounce pretty much all Chinese sounds – as simple as that! Each syllable consists of a “beginning” sound (called the initial) and a “final” sound (called, well, the final). Unlike in the European languages, there is a rather small and limited number of possible syllables in Chinese – around 400. That is because the sounds of Chinese are, in fact, arranged in small groups – namely, syllables. If someone asked you what Chinese sounds like, what would you say? In fact, many people would mention a certain “melodic” and “rhythmic” quality.