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Pronunciation
What's Pinyin
Pinyin is the Romanization of the Chinese characters based on their pronunciation. It uses 25 letters of 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. Although it's the first time you read Pinyin, you will be able to guess 50% of them correctly because the symbols are quite the same as English.
mǎ
This is Pinyin
马
This is a character
Pinyin: Three Parts
Generally, Pinyin syllable consists of three parts: initial, final and tone. Please tap to listen to each part.
zhan
m
ˇ
Tone
Initial
m
a
Final
Initial
In most cases, a syllable starts with an initial. There are 23 initials in Chinese:
b
p
m
f
d
t
n
l
g
k
h
j
q
x
r
z
c
s
y
w
zh
ch
sh
Final
The final follows the initial in a syllable. There are 35 finals, 6 are simple finals and 29 are compound finals.
Simple Final:
a
o
e
i
u
ü
Compound Final:
ai
ao
an
ang
ou
ong
ei
en
eng
er
ia
iao
ian
iang
ie
iu
in
ing
iong
ua
uai
uan
uang
uo
ui
un
üe
üan
ün
Tone
Chinese is a tonal language. The same syllable with a different tone has a different meaning. There are four tones and a neutral tone in Chinese:
ā
first
á
second
ǎ
third
à
fourth
a
Neutral
