Chapter 1
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Foundation course - Lesson 1 - Initials
Foundation course - Lesson 1 - Finals
Foundation course - Lesson 1 - First set!
Or play the basic games embedded below!
Welcome to our first Pinyin lesson!
Introduction
When you begin learning Mandarin, and you hear a native Chinese speaker, I know, it sounds like absolute gibberish.
They are making unique sounds to us, so if we are trying to listen or learn, how can we mimic them if we can’t even hear clearly the words they are using? How can we write it in a dictionary app or ask them what a word means?
Is it possible to spell it out or visualise how to pronounce it?
Great news! Introducing:
Pinyin.
Check out the Additional Resources, below!
What is pinyin?
(拼音/Pīnyīn)
Let’s first look at the two Chinese characters for “pinyin”: 拼音
The first, 拼, is pronounced similarly to “pin” in English, but with an added Chinese first tone (more in the next section) making it: pīn.
It means: “to spell” or “to piece together”.
The second, 音, is pronounced as we would read in English “yin”, only again with the added first tone making it: yīn.
This character means: “a sound” or “a note”.
So, 拼音 in Chinese literally means “spelling out the sounds”, and we can think of it as a pronunciation guide for us learners of Mandarin.
Using the Roman alphabet to represent Chinese characters and syllables, initial and final components (letters) can be put together to “spell” a Chinese character. By combining these letters together, we get the words that make it go from listening to absolute gibberish to words you can hear clearly, and can therefore go away to study.
Some people say Mandarin Chinese has over 50,000 characters. Others say 80,000 and others still, say over 100,000. However, in order to communicate effectively you only need between 1,000-5,000 and the average everyday native Chinese speaker only knows around 8,000.
That being said, although there are around 80,000 characters, in total the entirety of spoken Mandarin Chinese can be condensed into 409 unique sounds (multiplied by 4 for the different tones).
There’s even a nice little “pinyin chart” I made below, showing every possible syllable in the Chinese language and it can fit on one landscape piece of A4 paper! It’s down below in the “Additional Resources” section…. go on and download your copy!
Why is Pinyin Important?
1. Firstly, as you may have already guessed, pinyin acts as a bridge for pronunciation before needing to memorise Chinese characters. Pinyin is taught to Chinese children early as a tool to help them pronounce characters.
2. Pinyin is used by most communicating in Chinese on keyboards and on mobile devices, and, similarly to other romance languages, will use a qwerty keyboard when phonetically typing in Mandarin. (the correct characters are then selected after, but is now mostly automatic… this is essentially Chinese “predictive text”).
3. In my opinion, by far the most important for us after we begin learning characters: It gives us a foundation to clearly mark the 4 different Chinese tones… let’s look at an example:
Without the Chinese tones the letters “ma” could represent any number of different things, for example:
mā (妈) = mum/interjection equivalent to “oh, my!”
má (麻) = hemp/flax/fibrous crop
mǎ (马) = horse/a popular Chinese surname/abbreviation for Malaysia
mà (骂) = to scold/verbally abuse/condemn/rebuke
The Building Blocks of Pinyin
The Building Blocks of Pinyin
Pinyin is built from three parts:
Initials (声母 shēngmǔ) – the starting consonant sound
Examples: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l
Finals (韵母 yùnmǔ) – the vowel part (sometimes with a little extra on the end to spice things up!)
Examples: a, o, e, ai, ang, ong
Tones (声调 shēngdiào) – the “melody” of the syllable. Mandarin Chinese has, for the most part, 4 tones. We will go into greater detail in another lesson. For now, here are the 4 tones in Mandarin Chinese:
1st tone ( ˉ ) – flat and (somewhat) high
2nd tone ( ˊ ) – starting low, and rising
3rd tone ( ˇ ) – starting mid and dipping - going down then slightly up
4thtone ( ˋ ) – starting high, sharp and falling fast (lots of swearing uses this one!)
Every Chinese syllable is a combination of one initial + one final + one tone.
So, to follow our earlier example lets take the pinyin for the character “mother”:
mā =
妈 = m (initial) + a (final) + “—” above the “a” representing the first tone
No need to Master…
If you want to be fluent in mandarin, mastery of pinyin is not necessary.
Only with a teacher, coach or a guide, can you know what exactly is important to practice, what needs working on , where to make adjustments for the efficiency of your journey. For now. Simply:
Go through the sounds in this course with me.
Practice all of the pronunciation in the following lessons.
Begin your full Mandarin Chinese course with a boost to confidence, ability and understanding!
Common Misconceptions
1. Pinyin letters ARE NOT English letters. Pinyin is a phonetic system that represents Mandarin Chinese sounds using the Roman alphabet as a guide. However phonetically you can break it down like this:
Roughly 50% of Chinese pinyin is essentially the same as English.
Around 30% is similar, but practice is needed to annunciate correctly in Mandarin.
Leaving around 20% very different and requiring study and new muscle memory.
2. Although the tones change the meaning of the words completely, context is actually a lot more important. By starting with characters and building them into sentences like Lego, we can build a foundation to understand moving forward. For me, I am still constantly making tonal mistakes in Chinese, and yet Chinese native speakers still understand me perfectly (most of the time!).
How to Practice Pinyin
Forget what you know about English and approach these lessons with an open mind. At first, simply mimic and parrot the sounds, there is no need to feel self conscious.
Listen and repeat.
By working your way through the pinyin chart, learn the sounds of the initials, then finals, finally working through the Chinese pinyin chart. You will start with familiar and more simple sounds (like b, p, m) before moving to trickier ones (zh, q, x, ü, etc.)
Listen to a character, a word, a phrase or a sentence, slowly. Copy what you hear. If the recording says a word once, repeat it and say it aloud, don’t just read silently, before moving on.
Conclusion
Pinyin is a toolbox for learning Mandarin, and is very straight forward. Learn it well, now, and you’ll save yourself years of bad habits later.
It’s not about memorising all of the rules at once. Just start with the sounds, practice the tones, and build step by step from there.
If you are serious about learning Mandarin, pinyin is taught alongside Mandarin course as part of a comprehensive approach to Mandarin Chinese. Cut through the nonsense. Don’t waste time when you’d be so much better off continuing the course!
If you actually want to learn Mandarin Chinese and have some accountability with regular exercises, encouragement and regular progress markers, you’ll have real tangible feedback by taking class with me! Get in touch!
