subject: Undersanding Pinyin [print this page] Undersanding Pinyin Undersanding Pinyin
"Pinyin", called "HanYu Pinin" or "Mandarin Chinese Pinyin" is the usage of Roman letters to represent the pronunciation of Chinese characters. Pinyin is recent invention, it has been adopted in China only in 1979. The primary reason of creating Pinyin was to facilitate Chinese learning and teaching.
Chinese characters don't have phonetic clues; they are not associated with any sound. When we write word in English or any other language based on alphabet we spell a word with letter, this is not a case when comes to writing characters. Chinese characters are based on ideograms that mean they use graphic symbol system to represent idea or object.
Pinyin is extremely helpful, because it shows how to pronounce character. Any one whose language is based on Roman alphabet easily understands this system. One more important note on Pinyin, you should know that each syllable represents one character, because each Chinese character has only one syllable.
The concept of pinyin
Once you understand the concept of pinyin and pronounce the sounds correctly, you'll be able to read a passage of pinyin Chinese as if you were a native Chinese speaker.
A Chinese syllable is composed of an "initial" and "final".
There are only 21 initials in Chinese,
1. b p m f
2. d t n l
3. g k h
4. j q x
5. z c s
6. zh ch sh r
and 37 final sounds, which together form a total of roughly 420 different combination sounds.
Below for your reference are listed simple finals.
Simple finals
There are only six simple finals in Chinese: a, o, e, i, u, .
To practice you must combine the above initials and finals. It is as easy as: ba, bo, pi, po, fa, fu, mu etc.
Please look a the example of a word written in pinyin and split into its separate parts "losh" meaning 'teacher'. lo' means old' and sh' means master' . Together "old master"
The usage of Roman letter helps us to read, speak and memorize Chinese language faster.
Although pinyin symbols are the same as English letters, there are a few differences in pronunciation. For example the letter q' sounds like tch' in the English word witch' and the letter r' sounds more like ure' in the word leisure', it takes practice but it is a lot easier then remembering Chinese characters.
Tones
Tones are changes of pitch of syllables. In Mandarin Chinese there are four tones represented by the following tone-graph: the first tone (), the second tone (), the third tone () and the fourth tone (`). When a syllable is pronounced with a different tone the meaning of the syllable changes. So, as we see one word-syllable can have four different meanings. Lets use word "ma" as an example:
M -----first tone -----means mother,
M-----second tonemeans hemp,
M-----third tone------ means horse
M-----fourht tone---means to scold
I know this might seems a bit intimidating at first, however once you start listening to Chinese you will in no time be able to distinguish the difference in pronunciation of the same word.
As a student of the Chinese language, you might be interested in translating a paragraph or document from English to pinyin or Simplified Chinese. English to Chinese Translation offers an affordable service that fits anyone's pocket.
