Pronunciation

There are at least 200 dialects in China; some people have a different language as their mother tongue other than Mandarin. Pinyin is the sound system for Chinese characters in roman letters. Not only does it standardise the phonetic system, it also helps children and foreigners to learn Mandarin pronunciation.

It is useful for everyone to know a common language so they can communicate with each other. Some Chinese people also learn Mandarin as a second language like foreigners. Although their dialects are different, they all share the same writing characters. Pinyin is also used for indexing dictionaries and computer input method.

One character has one syllable. Chinese characters are like symbols, without learning the pinyin, it is difficult to know how to pronounce the word.

For example:
Do you know how to pronounce 牛?
How about ‘niú’?

With the aid of pinyin, English speakers can decode pinyin and make a sound closer to the Mandarin pronunciation. However, some Roman letter in pinyin has different pronunciation from English. This is similar to French using roman letter in the language, but it has different pronunciation from English.

Please note that pinyin is only a guide for the pronunciation, which is not a substitute of Chinese characters. We still need to learn the Chinese characters individually.

All pinyin start with an “initial” and end with a vowel sound called a “final”. For example: in the pinyin bà (爸), “b” is the initial and “a” is the final. Most Chinese words and sentences are formed by two or more characters, for example, 开心 (kāixīn - to fell happy). You use the initials and finals to identify where each sound beings and ends.

4 Tones

Mandarin speaking has 4 tones. Even though some characters have the same pinyin spelling, they pronounce differently when they have different tones. For example, 妈 (mā) and 麻 (má). Furthermore some characters have the same pinyin spelling and tones, they still have different meanings, for instance, 由 and 鱿 both have the same pinyin spelling and tone, which is “yóu”, but their meanings are completely different. The meaning of 由 is “to follow, from, reason, cause and due to” whereas 鱿 means “cuttlefish”.

This case is similar to “there” and “their” in English, which is homonym. Just remember that every single character has different meanings.

The 4 tones are represented by the following symbols. They are placed above the characters. Apart from the 4 tones, there is one ‘neutral’ tone.

First Tone

Steady high-level tone. You pronounce this sound with high even pitch and hold it as if you are singing. (妈 - mā)

Second Tone

Rising tone. It is a sound pronounced from middle to high pitch. (麻 - má)

Third Tone

Falling then rising tone. Your sound pitch from middle low level and descends down deep, then rise to reach the middle level. (马 - mǎ)

Fourth Tone

Falling tone. You pronounce this sound with sharp fall from high pitch to mid-level as if you are making a statement; try to imagine when you need to say ‘Help!’ in English. (骂 - mà)

Many Chinese characters have more than one meaning. Some of them have multiple pronunciations. For example, the pronunciation of 行 is “háng” when it is used as a noun meaning “row” or “profession”. However, when it is used to express movement such as “to walk” or “to perform”, its pronunciation is “xíng”.

Neutral Tone

There is no tone mark with this tone as it is toneless.

Most Chinese words are made up of more than one character. If the character with the 3rd tone followed by another character with 3rd tone, you change the tone of the first character into the 2nd tone in speaking, because it sounds better.

Please note that you do not write the tone change, you only change the tone in speaking. We write it here for demonstration purposes only. For example: “xiǎolǎohǔ” (小老虎) becomes “xiǎoláohǔ”.

There are some specific tone changes for 不 and 一: The original tone of the character 不 (bù - not/no) has the 4th tone. However, it changes to 2nd tone “bú” when it is followed by another 4th tone. For example:

不要 (not want) bùyào becomes búyào

不是 (not be) bùshì becomes búshì

不对 (not right) bùduì becomes búduì

The original tone of the character 一 (yī - one) has the 1st tone. It changes to a second tone when it is followed by the 4th tone.

一样 (the same) yīyàng becomes yíyàng

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