Pinyin Basics
In English, different spellings, such as pair and pear can have the same pronunciation. In Pinyin, there is no such ambiguity. If you see two words written in Pinyin such as zhè and zhǎi, you may rest assured that they represent two different sounds. Also, in English, if you see a newly coined word like perough you would not know whether to pronounce it as peroh, piroh, piroff, peroff, or maybe even prof. After you have learned the rules of Pinyin, when you see the Pinyin for a new word you are always sure how to pronounce it.
Pinyin uses familiar Roman letters combined with a tone diacritic to represent Chinese sounds. The letters used are all in the English alphabet with the exception of {ü}. The first, second, third and fourth tone are represented by little marks called 'diacritics' placed above a vowel in the syllable. Syllables that have the fifth ‘neutral tone’ take no diacritic. For example, the letter {b} combines with the letter {a} and either one of the four tone markers or no tone marker at all to form five valid Pinyin syllables {bā, bá, bă, bà, ba}. Each of these five syllables correspond to atleast one Chinese character (as you can see in the second column of the table below), and a change in tone can mean a change in meaning. The chart below further illustrates this fact.
| Pinyin Syllable | Example Character | English Translation |
|---|---|---|
| bā | 八 | eight |
| bá | 拔 | pull |
| bǎ | 把 | grasp |
| bà | 爸 | father |
| ba | 吧 | suggestive particle (grammatical) |
The Roman letters used to represent Putonghua are:
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u ü w x y z
In fact, the only letter that from the English alphabet that is not used is {v} and, as mentioned before, the {ü} is the only letter that is not native to the English alphabet.
Syllable structure in English is best understood by considering vowels and consonants. In contrast, syllable structure in Mandarin is best understood by considering initials, glides, and finals. There are four types of syllables:
- Final by itself.
- Initial + Final.
- Glide + Final.
- Initial + Glide + Final.
Initials
Counting strictly by the number of initial consonant sounds, there are 21 Initials in Putonghua represented by the following letters and letter combinations:
b p m f d t n l g k h j q x zh c h sh r z c s
There are also two letters in Pinyin spelling that look like initials, but are not in phonological terms. Those letters, {w} and {y} , are used to satisfy certain spelling rules in Pinyin (explained in the Spelling Rules section).
English often puts several consonants together in initial consonant clusters such as the /str/ in street or the /pl/ in play. Chinese only allows one consonant at a time in initial position. This means that, when Chinese borrow English words, they often break up these initial consonant clusters into separate syllables. For example,the English two syllable name ‘Clinton’ has three syllables in Pinyin {Kèlíndùn}.
Glides
The three glides of Mandarin are {w}, {y}, and {ü}.
Finals
In the traditional analysis there are 35 finals. If glides are separated from finals, then there are 21 finals. The simplest final consists of a single vowel. However, many finals have complex vowels or diphthongs. Finals can also end with one of the nasal consonants {m}, {n}, and {ng}.
Note: Sometimes, the {v} is used in place of {ü}. While this is not standard Pinyin spelling, it is useful for computer and cell phone input methods
Exceptions
The basic rule of Pinyin is that every sound is represented conistently by one character. The exceptions to this principle are in the following links (also listed in the side menu):