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Episode 1: Learn the Chinese Alphabet (Pinyin)

Introduction Pinyin Alphabet (Chinese (汉语 – 漢語 – Hànyǔ, 华语 – 華語 – Huáyǔ – or 中文 – Zhōngwén)

Pinyin romanization, also spelled Pin-yin, also called Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, Chinese (Pinyin) Hanyu pinyin wenzi (“Chinese-language combining-sounds alphabet”), a system of romanization for the Chinese written language based on the pronunciation of the Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese.

Pinyin is a system for writing standard Mandarin Chinese using the Roman alphabet. Pinyin was developed by the People’s Republic of China in 1958 and implemented in 1979. It is used exclusively in mainland China to this day. Over the years pinyin has become widely accepted by the international community, replacing older systems of Romanization such as the Wade-Giles system. It is important to remember that although pinyin uses the same letters as European languages, the sounds those letters represent are the sounds of Mandarin Chinese.

Pinyin elements:

• Hanyu Pinyin syllables include 23 consonants (top) and 24 vowels (bottom).
• 韵母: Vowels are divided into single vowels and compound vowels with a total of 36 sound 1) single vowels have 6 sounds and 2) compound vowels have 30 sounds.
• 声调: Tonal sound, has 4 tones and a low tone (will be studied in the next chapter)

Pinyin (Alphabets) Tones

Chinese is a tonal language, i.e., tones change the meanings of words. Mandarin Chinese is normally said to have just four tones. However, there is also a neutral tone which does not occur very often but is just as important. The tone is indicated by a tone mark placed on top of the vowel. It should be placed on the letter a or e, on the letter o in the ou final, and on the last vowel in all other cases. The neutral tone is indicated by the lack of tone mark.

Since Mandarin has a limited number of syllables, there are a lot of homophones whose meanings vary with the tone. In the table shown on the right, the syllable is “ma” but the tone is different.