Lesson #1 - Basics of Mandarin Chinese and Pinyin

Pinyin (拼音) is phonetic system of Mandarin Chinese; it is currently the most commonly used Romanization system for Mandarin. Pinyin is now used in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore to teach Mandarin Chinese and used globally to teach Mandarin as a second language. It is also often used to type Chinese characters on computers and cellphones. Although it is based on the Roman alphabet, Pinyin uses a slightly different pronunciation system. Here are the areas you need to be aware of when learning Pinyin:

Consonants

c like “ts” in “sets”
q like “ch” in “Chinese”
x like “sh” in “show”
z like “ds” in “beds”
zh like “j” in “June”

Vowels

a as in “father”
ai as in “Shanghai”
ei as in “Beijing”
i as in “Maria” except in the following combinations: ci, chi, ri, si, shi, zi, zhi when it is pronounced as in “sir”
ia as “ya” in “yard”
ian sounds like “yen”
iang sounds like “yahn”
ie sounds like “yea”
iu sounds like “yo” in “yoke”
o as in “for”
ou as in “though”
u as in “too”
ui sounds like “way”
uo sounds like “war”
ü as in “few”

Tone

There are four tones in Mandarin Chinese. The first tone is flat and continuous, as if briefly holding the same musical note. The second is a rising tone similar to the intonation of a question, for example “Why?” The third tone drops, then raises, like a note of surprise as in “What!” The fourth is a falling tone like the tone of an emphatic “No!” in English.
The tones are often expressed in these symbols:

First  ˉ
Second   ́
Third  ˇ
Fourth   ̀

Take an English word as an example. The word “buy” can be pronounced in the four different tones:

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This is an area that confuses a lot of English speaking people. Sometimes, they pronounce the phonetic symbol correctly but with a wrong, the word can have completely different meaning. For example

妈(ma1) means mother
马(ma3) means horse

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