Chinese Words

 

About Pinyin - the romanized spelling system of Chinese

Pinyin: 拼音 (pīn yīn)

Read more about pinyin and its pronunciation below.

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About Pinyin

Pinyin (拼音) is a romanized spelling system of the Chinese language, used to represent Chinese sounds with European letters. Of all the 26 letters of the English alphabet, 25 are used in Pinyin. The sound "V" is not a phoneme used in the Chinese language.

Although the letters are the same, the sounds they represent differ in some cases. For this reason, there is really no easy way to tell from pinyin exactly how the Chinese words sound, but it is extremely easy for an english speaker to guess.

The Bopomofo is another standard used to represent Chinese sounds, except instead of english roman letters, it uses Chinese-derived letters for the alphabet. Since the bopomofo has 37 normal characters, it can provide a more complete spelling for Chinese words than the 26 letters of English can.

 

Pinyin Pronunciation Overview

In Chinese, syllables are composed of consonants, vowels, and tones. According to traditional notation, each Chinese syllable is composed of an "inital" and a "final".

English words are made up of vowels and consonants. In Chinese, every syllable is made up of initials and finals.

  • An initial is basically equivalent to an english consonant. Initials are the first 21 symbols of the bopomofo
  • A final is bassically equivalent to an english vowel. A final can be combined with other finals to form a compound final. While the bopomofo contains 16 of the pinyin finals, pinyin also includes additional compound finals, as shown in the finals table below.

So, in chinese,
  syllable = initial + final

There are a few pronunciation rules about how initials and finals can be put together.

 

Pinyin Initials

There are 21 initials in Chinese. Click on the bopomofo symbol to listen to a sample recording. Special thanks to Jeff Winters for proofreading the table below. See www.liwin.com for more on zhuyin (bopomofo) / pinyin equivalence.

Pinyin Letter Equivalent Bopomofo Sounding How to pronounce
b Bilabial unaspirated plosive. Say it like a normal english b, except, it is not voiced. There are no voiced plosives in Chinese.
p Bilabial unaspirated plosive. It sounds like an english "p".
m Bilabial nasal sound. It sounds like an english "m".
f Labio-dental fractive. To make this sound, press the upper teeth against the lower lip, and let the breath flow out with friction. Kind of like an english "f".
d Tongue-tip alveolar unaspirated plosive.
t A tongue-topped alveolar aspirated stop.
n A tongue-tipped alveolar nasal. It is produced by placing the tip of the tongue against the ridge behind the upper teeth.
l ("L") Is a tongue tip alveolar lateral. It is basically the same as the english "L" except that the tongue should touch the alveolar ridge.
g An unaspirated voiceless velar stop.
k An aspirated voiceless velar stop. Same as in english.
h Voiceless velar fricative.
j The unaspirated voiceless palatal affricate. Its kind of like the combination of a "Z" and a "D". To make this sound, first raise the front of the tongue to the hard palate and press the tip of the tongue against the back of the lower teeth, and then loosen the tongue and let the air squeeze out through the channel thus made. It is unaspirated and the vocal cords do not vibrate.
q An aspirated voiceless palatal fricative. Sounds like a "CH" combined with a "Z". It is produced like pinyin "J", except it is aspirated.
x A voiceless palatal fricative. Sounds like an "S" mixed up with a "Z" somehow. You say this by raising the front of the tongue toward the hard palate without touching it. Then let the air squeeze on out.
z An unaspirated voiceless blade-alveolar affricate. Say this by trying to say a normal english "Z", and then accidentally mix up a "D", "Z", "R", and a "J" with it.
c An aspirated voiceless blade-alveolar affricate. Say this by mixing up a "CH", "D", "Z", and an "R".
s A voiceless blade-alveolar fricative. Mix up an "SH", "Z", and an "R".
zh An unaspirated voiceless blade-palatal affricate. Say "Z" very lightly, with extra air, thus the "H". Pronounce this by turning up the tip of the tongue against the hard palate, and then lossening it and letting the air sqeeze out of the channel thus made.
ch Like "ZH" above, but with an extra hint of a "D". As an aspirated voiceless blade-palatal affricate, this sound is produced in the same manner as the "ZH" initial above, but it is aspirated instead.
sh A voiceless blade-palatal fricative. Like "ZH", but with an extra hint of a "T". Try to sum "CH" + "T" + "Z" + "D" + "R" into one consonant. To make this sound, you can turn up the tip of your tongue toward (but not touching) the hard palate and then let the aire squeeze out.
r A voiced blade-palatal fricative. It does not really sound like an "R", at all. But rather, more like a "SH" + "Z" + "D" + "ZH" + "R" combo.

 

Pinyin Simple Finals

These are the simple finals, which are formed from only one simple roman character. Click on the bopomofo symbol to listen to a sample recording (Internet Explorer only).

Pinyin Letter Equivalent Bopomofo Sounding How to pronounce
a Like the "A" in "ALL". Leave the tongue in a natural, relaxed position.
o A rounded, semi-high, back vowel.
e An unrounded semi-high back vowel. Not exactly the same as the english "E". To make this, pronounce "O", and then change the shape of your mouth from rounded to unrounded, and open your mouth wider.
i An unrounded high front vowel. The tongue is raised higher than in the english counterpart.
u An exciting rounded high back vowel. The tongue is raised higher than in the english "U".
ü A rounded high front vowel. To make this sound, first pronounce an "i", and then modify the shape of your mouth from unrounded to rounded.

 

Pinyin Compound Finals

These are the compound finals, which are formed from two or more roman characters. Where available, you can click on the bopomofo symbol to listen to a sample recording (Internet Explorer only).

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

 

Pinyin Spelling Rules

  1. If there is no initial before i, i is a semi-vowel.
    this... becomes this...
    ia ya
    ie ye
    iao yao
    iu you
    ian yan
    iang yang
    in yin
    ing ying
    o yo


  2. If there is no initial before ü, add a y, and drop the umlaut.
    this... becomes this...
    ü yu
    üan yuan
    üe yue
    ün yun

     

  3. u becomes w if not preceded by an initial. u by itself becomes wu
  4. ueng is written as ong if preceded by an initial.
  5. To avoid confusion, an aspostraphe is used to separate two syllables with connecting vowels.

 

Pinyin Accent Marks

Pinyin can be written using either numerals for the tone marks, or using accent marks instead of numerals. The accent marks look better, but you need to have unicode fonts installed on your computer to view them correct. Below are listed all the vowels with all pinyin accent marks.

a ā á ǎ à e ē é ě è i ī í ǐ ì o ō ó ǒ ò u ū ú ǔ ù ü ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ





 
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