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Blue Dragon (the seven mansions of the east sky)
What is Pinyin?
How do the Chinese read their characters? How do they know how to pronounce them? Is there an easy way to read characters for beginners? These are just some of the questions beginners ask. The answer is yes there is an easy way to remember how to pronounce chinese characters. There are many systems related to this but the most widely used one is Pinyin. What is pinyin? Pinyin is the romanization of the pronunciation of Chinese characters or Han zi (汉字). Romanization just means using the western alphabet to represent a character's pronounciation.
The Tones
In Mandarin there are four tones and one neutral tone that you need to know :
- 1. ˉ : this tone above a lette means the character will be a longer drawn out pronunciation
- 2. ˊ : this tone above a letter means the tone will rise from a low to high tone
- 3. ˇ : this tone above a character means the tone will have a faaling rising intonation
- 4.ˋ : this tone above a character means the tone is a falling tone, high to low
- 5. : no tone mark will indicate a neutral tone, neither long not rising or falling
Each Chinese character will have only one tone and the tone markers are placed according to strict rules. Tone marker are always placed over vowels, if a or e is in a word then that vowel will take precedence over rest of vowels. In ou the o takes the tone mark. All other combinations and the last vowel will take the marker. A summary of the main point can bee seen in the table below.
| a | e | i | o | u | ü | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | ái | áo | ||||
| e | éi | |||||
| i | iá, iáo | ié | ió | iú | ||
| o | óu | |||||
| u | uá, uái | ué | uí | uó | ||
| ü | üé | |||||
| Summary of tone markers | ||||||
Further information can be found on the excellent and comprehensive site pinyin.info created by Mark Swofford of Banqiao, Taiwan
I hope this lesson has been useful and hope that it will serve as a reference for you. I may add other information to this page so please keep coming back. click here to go back to lesson index and read another. Dont forget to try the chatroom where you can meet fellow learners and make new friends. Practice your manadarin, or meet people in your area who speak chinese.
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