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Beginner's Guide to Pinyin

Pinyin is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese that uses letters of the Latin alphabet to represent the sounds of Mandarin Chinese. It helps pronounce Chinese characters correctly and type in Chinese. A full Pinyin syllable consists of an initial consonant, a final vowel sound, and a tone marked with diacritical marks. There are 21 initial consonants and 39 possible final vowel sounds that make up syllables in Mandarin Chinese, along with 4 tones represented by accent marks. The document provides an overview of Pinyin pronunciation including examples and rules for combining initials and finals to form syllables.

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362 views3 pages

Beginner's Guide to Pinyin

Pinyin is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese that uses letters of the Latin alphabet to represent the sounds of Mandarin Chinese. It helps pronounce Chinese characters correctly and type in Chinese. A full Pinyin syllable consists of an initial consonant, a final vowel sound, and a tone marked with diacritical marks. There are 21 initial consonants and 39 possible final vowel sounds that make up syllables in Mandarin Chinese, along with 4 tones represented by accent marks. The document provides an overview of Pinyin pronunciation including examples and rules for combining initials and finals to form syllables.

Uploaded by

akıle nese
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Chinese Beginner 1 – Lesson 1 ricelanguagecentre.

com
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pīn yīn Pronunciation

What is Pinyin?
! Official system used in Standard Chinese
! Help you to pronounce a Chinese character correctly
! Help you to type in Chinese
! Include: 1) Initial Consonant, 2) Final syllable, 3) Tone

shēng mǔ
Initial Consonant
b p m f d t n l
g k h j q x
zh ch sh r z c s

y w

yùn mǔ
Final syllable
a o e i u ü er

ei ou ia ie iu iao ai ao
ua uo ui uai üe
an en in ian uan un üan ün
ang ong eng ing iang iong uang ueng

1!

!
Chinese Beginner 1 – Lesson 1 ricelanguagecentre.com
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shēng diào
Tones - 4 tones no tone

1st: — 2nd: 3rd: 4th:

Overview of a full Pinyin:


e.g. bà gē mèi
- usually formed by 1 initial, 1 final, 1 tone

Pinyin Rule:
1) Tone is placed above Final, according to sequence ‘a’, ‘o’, ‘e’, ‘i / u’, ‘ü’
2) But when ‘i’ & ‘u’ are linked together, tone symbol is always marked above the
latter one.

Notes for you


Final ‘ü’:
- ü, üe, üan, ün: when linked to initials ‘j’, ‘q’, ‘x’, ‘y’ , the ‘two dots’ of ü will be
eliminated (final ‘u’ will not link to any initials of ‘j’, ‘q’, ‘x’, ‘y’, so no confusing
words will appear)

2!

!
Chinese Beginner 1 – Lesson 1 ricelanguagecentre.com
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‘i’ as final:
- there are special 7 initials, when linked with final ‘i’, don’t produce the sound of
‘yee’
- zi, ci, si, zhi, chi, shi, ri
they sound the same as their initials

Final ‘er’
- no initial is linked to ‘er’
- can still form words on its own

ê
- is actually the ‘e’ in ie and üe. The sound for ‘ê’ is the same as English vowel ‘e’,
which generating the sound for ie, üe
- sometimes it’s not considered as final syllable
- no initial is linked to ‘ê’ (it alone can only form 1 Chinese character)

3!

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