Lesson 1-1 Chinese Pinyin
An overview of Chinese Pinyin
Chinese Pinyin uses Roman alphabetical letters as its written form, but having different pronunciation (Table 1):
Table 1 Chinese Phonetic Alphabet
Aa ㄚ Bb ㄅㄝ Cc ㄘㄝ Dd ㄉㄝ Ee ㄜ Ff ㄝㄈ
Gg ㄍㄝ Hh ㄏㄚ Ii ㄧ Jj ㄐㄧㄝ Kk ㄎㄝ Ll ㄝㄌ
Mm ㄝㄇ Nn ㄋㄝ Oo ㄛ Pp ㄆㄝ Qq ㄑㄧㄡ Rr ㄚㄦ
Ss ㄝㄙ Tt ㄊㄝ Uu ㄨ Vv 万ㄝ Ww ㄨㄚ Xx ㄒㄧ
Yy ㄧㄚ Zzㄗㄝ
National phonetic alphabet is still being used in China’s Taiwan Province.
Before introducing Chinese syllables, we need to know the names of the articulators – the parts of our speech organs used to produce a specific sound. The major articulators involved are illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Points of Articulation
upper lip
lower lip
upper teeth
lower teeth
upper gum
lower gum
hard palate
soft palate
oral cavity
nasal cavity
tip of the tongue
root of the tongue
vocal cords
A Chinese syllable usually consists of three elements: the initial consonant, the simple or compound vowel, and the tone. The initial consonant refers to the consonant which appears in the initial position of a syllable, and the simple or compound vowel comes after it. Some syllables can stand alone without initial consonants. There are a total of 21 initial consonants and 36 vowels, which include 7 simple vowels and 29 vowels-compounds. The vowels-compounds can be further divided into three categories: compound vowel, front nasal vowels and back nasal vowels.
