| pinyin |
Dr. Mei-Jean Kuo Barth |
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A brief Introduction to Chinese Pinyin System
A Brief Introduction to Chinese Pinyin system
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The phonological system of the modern standard language in Chinese, Putonghua or Guoyu, can be represented by letters. Of all the letters of English alphabet, 25 letters are used for Pinyin. Letter 'v' is not used, while letter 'ü' is added to represent the vowel sound 'yu'.
Consonant letters
There are 20 consonant letters use in Putonghua. Letter 'V' is not used. Three consonants are represented by combinations of two letters - 'zh', 'ch' and 'sh':
b
p
m
f
d
t
n
l
g
k
h
j
q
x
z
c
s
zh
ch
sh
r
y
w
Note:
The actual sound you hear for each letter is a combination of the consonant and a vowel.
'y' and 'w' are used for 'i' and 'u' respectively if they appear at the beginning of a syllable: e.g. 'ya [ia]' 'wa [ua]'. Or they are added when 'i' and 'u' are independent syllables, e.g. 'yi [i]', 'wu [u]'
Vowel letters
There are 6 vowel letters used in Putonghua:
a
o
e
i
u
ü
Tones
There are four tones in Putonghua: the 1st tone, the 2nd tone, the 3rd tone and the 4th tone. They are superimposed over the main vowel of a syllable and represented by diacritic markers.
1st ton: high and long
2nd tone: rising and long
3rd tone: low and short
4th tone: falling and short
Syllables
Syllables are composed by consonants, vowels and tone. According to the trational notation, a syllable is composed by a 'initial' and a 'final'. An initial is the first sound of a syllable, usually, a consonant. A final is the rest part of the syllable. The final can be a single vowel, or a combination of vowels, or combination of vowels and nasals 'n' or 'ng': For example: (the following syllables are not human voice, they are produced by Bell-lab automatic speech synthecizing program)
Single vowel
a, i, u
Combination of vowels
ao, ia
Combination of a vowel and a nasal
an, en, in, ang, eng, ing
Combination of vowels and a nasal
uan, uang, iong
Combination of consonant and a vowel
wǒ, nǐ, tā
Combination of consonant, vowel and consonant
nín, lán, mén, lín
Other possible combinations
nóng, zhōng, chuān
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| Last updated 2008/09/28 05:16:12 EDT | Hits 209 |
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