Pǔtōnghuà Pīnyīn

Pīnyīn is the phonetic system which is used in China. It adopts Roman letters to denote the sounds of Mandarin. Mandarin is the official national language in China, and it is also known as Pǔtōnghuà, which means “the common speech”.

Most syllables in Pǔtōnghuà are composed of three parts; the initials, the finals and the tones. In Pǔtōnghuà pīnyīn, there are 21 initials, 38 finals and four tones. The initial is always a consonant. The final is a vowel, which may be a simple final, a compound final or a nasal final.

A. Simple Finals

1. There are six simple finals in Mandarin

a　Pronounced as what you do when the doctor says: “Open your mouth wide and say ‘Ah’.

o　Similar to ‘or’ in English ‘order’and more

e　Similar to ‘er’ in English ‘herb’, ‘bird’. It can be produced by pronouncing‘o’and then spreading the lips towards two sides.

i　Similar to ‘ee’ ‘ ea’ in English ‘bee’ or ‘lead.

u　Similar to ‘oo’ in English ‘book’ or ‘look’

ü　Although this sound is not found in English, it is pronounced like the French ‘u’as in ‘la lune’ or ‘sue’. It is pronounced with the tongue in position for “i , but the lips are forced into a round position.

2. Rules of Romanization

When standing alone as a syllable, ‘i’, ‘u’ and ‘ü’ are written “yi”, “wu” and “yu”.

B. Initials

Initials are consonants at the beginning of each syllable. There are total 21 initials in Chinese pinyin. In this lesson we will learn eight of them.

b　This initial is equivalent to the [b] in bill, but not voiced.

p　This initial is equivalent to the [p] as in pen and pill, but is more aspirated

m　This initial is equivalent to the [m] as in mother and mill

f　This initial is equivalent to the [f] as in five and flow.

d　The initial is equivalent to the [d] in dill, but is unvoiced

t　This initial is equivalent to the [t] in tea and time, but is more aspirated

n　This initial is equivalent to the [n] in nice and not

l　This initial is equivalent to the [l] as in low and look.

C. Tones

Putonghua is a tone language in which tones are used to show differences in meaning.There are four basic tones in Putonghua, the first tone, the second tone, the third tone and the fourth tone.

The above four tones are illustrated in the following tone graph:

The first tone is high in level. The pitch value is 55. The first tone mark is “-”, such as ā

The second tone is a rising tone. The pitch value is 35, its tone mark is “/”, such as á

The third tone is a low tone. The pitch value is 214. Its tone mark is”v”, such as ǎ

The fourth tone is a falling tone. Its pitch value is 51. The tone mark is “\”, as à

In addition to the four basic tones, there is a neutral tone, which is pronounced brie fly and softly, and there is no tone mark above the syllable.

For example: bàba, gēge, etc

A syllable, when pronounced in a different tone, has a different meaning even if it is composed of the same initial and final.

For example: mā (mother)　má (hemp)　mǎ (horse)　mà (to scold)

bā (eight)　bá (to pull out)　bǎ (target)　bà (father)

Therefore the correct use of the tones is very important.

Where is the tone mark put?

They are put above the main vowel of a syllable. The main vowel can be identified according to the following sequence: a-o-e-i-u-ü. For example, in ao the main vowel is a, in ei the main vowel is e. When i and u are combined into a syllable, the tone mark is written on the second vowel; iù, uì. When placing a tone mark above i, the dot of i is omitted.

A syllable is normally made up of an initial, a final and a tone. For example:

D. Third tone Change (I)

When a 3rd tone is followed by another 3rd tone, the first 3rd tone changes to a 2nd tone. E.g.

Nǐ hǎo→Ní hǎo. Wǒ hěn hǎo.→Wó hén hǎo. In this book, the initial 3rd tone is marked as the 3rd tone even when it is pronounced as a 2nd tone.