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Episode 3: Know the Mandarin Chinese Characters, Consonants, Vowels, and Tones

Consonants, vowels, tone, and spelling (pinyin (拼音)) in Chinese at the beginning of the study. The recitation should be read accurately in one of the systems first, such as

• Zhuyin, is a traditional Chinese style that has been used for a long time. It is commonly used among Chinese people who through previous studies In China, Taiwan, for example
• Hanyu Pinyin is new to the Chinese public education system and will be seen in the papers published in later eras and is commonly used today.

Pinyin Elements

• 声母: Consonants have 21 letters, 23 sounds.
• 韵母: Vowels are divided into single vowels and compound vowels with a total of 36 sounds: 1) single vowels have 6 sounds and 2) compound vowels have 30 sounds.
• 声调: Tonal sound, 4 tones and low tones (will be studied in the next)

What is Hanyu Pinyin?

Hanyu Pinyin (literally written as 汉语拼音）means “Chinese Spell-Out Sound”. It is more commonly called “Pinyin” for short. The Hanyu Pinyin system uses a series of consonants and vowels to spell out the Mandarin pronunciation of a Chinese character.

About Pinyin

Hanyu Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Mandarin Chinese sounds into a Latin alphabet. It was invented in 1950s and adopted as a standard in mainland China in 1958. Pinyin is used for several purposes such as: teaching Chinese, transcribing names and places into words accessible to European language speakers, and used as an input method for typing Chinese characters.

Pinyin is not the only system devised to transcribe Chinese sounds into roman letters. An older system called Wade-Giles was used in the first half of the 20th century and it has left its mark on the English language. For instance, 功夫 is romanized as “kungfu” in Wade-Giles, but “gongfu” in Pinyin. Also, 北京 (the capital of China) was in the past romanized as “Peking”, but is “Beijing” in Pinyin. It is a common misconception that the city changed names, but the sound never changed, only how we spell the sound with letters.

What are the Chinese Vowels and Chinese 4 Tones?

The Chinese vowels are characterized by one of the Chinese 4 Tones with an accent mark [ ¯ ′ ˇ ` ] or none for words with a neutral tone. Sometimes, for ease of writing and reading, we use the number 1, 2, 3, 4 to represent the Chinese accents accordingly.

Note: In all my posts, I will only use Hanyu Pinyin with Chinese accents because this is the traditional way and a proper method of learning. The more you look at these Chinese Pinyin words with accent marks, the faster you will recognize them in the future.

• Single Vowel: a、o、e、i、u、ü
• Double Vowel: ai、ei、 ui、ao、 ou、iu、ie、üe、 er
• Nasal Vowel: an、en、in、un、ün、ang、eng、 ing、ong

What are Chinese Consonants?

A consonant is a basic speech sound in which the breath is partly obstructed and can be used by adding a vowel to form a syllable.

There are arguments on whether there are 21 or 23 Chinese consonants in the Hanyu Pinyin system. Officially, it is 21 Chinese consonants and later, [ y ] and [ w ] is added.

The [ y ] sounds like [ i ], and [ w ] sounds like [ u ] as the Singular vowel. When practicing the sound of the Chinese consonants, [ y ] and [ w ] should be included because they can be combined with other vowels to form another sound.

The 23 Chinese consonants are b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s, y and w.

Consonants There are 21 consonants in Chinese:

ㄅ ㄆ ㄇ ㄎ ㄗ ㄘ ㄙ

1. b is equivalent to ” y” ,
2. p is equivalent to “p”
3. m . can be the letter “m”
4. f is the letter “f”
5. d is the letter “T”
6. t is the letter “T or T”
7. n is the letter “N”
8. l is the letter “n” The letter “l”
9. g is the letter “a”
10. k is the letter “c”
11. h is the letter “H”
12. j the letter “e”
13. q is the letter “g”
14. x It can be compared to the letter “S”.
15. zh can be compared to the sound in Thai as “Rue”.
16. ch can be compared to the sound in Thai as “Rue”.
17. sh can be compared to the sound in Thai as “sue”
18. r to be compared to the sound in Thai as “yer”
19. z to be compared to the sound in Thai as “ju”
20. c compare to the sound in Thai as “name A”
21. s can be compared with the sound in Thai as “Sue”

Vowels has 16 vowels:

ㄚ ㄛ ㄜ ㄝ ㄤ 一 一 ㄨ ㄩ.

Vowel 韵母 – a single vowel. In Chinese, there are 6 sounds. The single vowels are as follows.

a o e i u ü a o e e e u
a wee

There are 9 compound vowels in Chinese.

• ai (ai) ei (ey)
• ao (aw) ou (ow)
• ia (ea / e + ah) ie (ea / e + e)
• ​​ua ( awa ) uo ( ue )
• ue ( ew )

There are 4 mixed vowels in Chinese.

• iao (eo /ee+ah+oh ) iu ( iou ) ( ew /ee+oh+oo )
• uai ( io /oo+ah+ai ) ui ( uei ) ( ui /oo+a+e )

Nasik vowels in Chinese have 16 sounds as follows:

1. an (an)
2. ang (ang)
3. ong (ong)
4. en (en)
5. eng (en)
6. ian (ian)
7. in
8. iang
9. ing (ing)
10. iong (e + ong)
11. uan (net)
12. un (un)
13. uang(uwang/u + ang)
14. ueng (ewing/u + eng)
15. uan (awan)
16. un (wun)

Tones are as follows:
╴ ˊ ˇ ˋ ˙

• The 1st sound: ˉ compares sound and tone in ordinary language.
• The 2nd sound: /compare the sound with tone in jut
• The 3rd sound:  ˇ compares the sound with the tone in  language.
• The 4th sound:  Compare sound with tone in Tho

Tonal transcript

The Pinyin system has four tonal symbols as follows:

1. The first tone is represented by a short dash (ˉ), the equivalent of a common or tertiary sound: ā ē ī ō ū ǖ.
2. The Second tone is represented by a right-slant dash (ˊ), equivalent to the sound of the quarta: á é í ó ú ǘ
3. The Third tone is represented by a wedge-shaped dash (ˇ), similar to the sound of ek (but not the sound of “ek“): ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ
4. The Fourth tone is represented with a left slant (ˋ), equivalent to the sound of tho: à è ì ò ù
5. The Fifth tone Unmarked: aeiou ü (but sometimes write a dot before the syllable, e.g. · yo)

To use a typewriter or computer Numbers may also be used instead of tonal marks (1 2 3 4 5 respectively).