Can you pronounce the words below?
奢侈品,支持者,美国,十四是十四, 登山杖,观光客
If not, you’re losing valuable study time.
What about if I convert them to pinyin below? Can you read them now?
Shēchǐ pǐn, zhīchí zhě, měiguó, shísì shì shísì, dēngshān zhàng, guānguāng kè
If you want to learn Mandarin Chinese, mastering the fundamentals of pinyin is essential.
Believe it or not, the basics of pronunciation and pinyin should be learned before you learn a single word of Chinese.
(PS - accent is not the same thing as pronunciation).
Learning the basics of pinyin will speed up your learning 2-3x faster like it did for me.
But most students don’t learn the fundamentals or they rush through it creating bad habits and confusion when they speak. This also means lots of wasted time.
To good news - Mandarin pronunciation is easy if you learn the right fundamentals. There are strict rules and it always stays the same, unlike English which has many exceptions. Learn it once and you are set to go!
Let’s start with pinyin.
PS. Trying to improve your pronunciation alone is hard. That’s why this month I’m helping a few students to improve your pronunciation and speaking with personalized feedback. If you want help message me here or email me at danyopang@gmail.com.
What Is Pinyin?
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, is the most common romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. In simple terms, pinyin converts Mandarin speech and characters into a Latin alphabet that can be used to help learners learn and improve their pronunciation.
If you want to learn to speak Chinese, you need to learn pinyin, especially if you’re an English speaker.
Pinyin is not only used by adult learners, but it’s also widely used by native Chinese speakers when typing on phones and laptops.
How Does Pinyin Work?
In the pinyin system, each Chinese character has a corresponding pinyin syllable. Each syllable is composed of an initial consonant, a vowel final, and a tone.
Below is a list of all the initials and finals within the pinyin system. All characters have a corresponding pinyin syllable that is composed of a combination of the below initials and finals.
This is the basics of the pinyin system. Seems simple enough right? Next, we’ll put everything together with the pinyin chart.
Improve Your Pronunciation With A Pinyin Chart
The pinyin chart is a visual representation of the pinyin system. I never knew about the pinyin chart until several months after I started studying Chinese! This would have been immensely helpful in the beginning, which is why I’m sharing it here.
The Pinyin chart consists of rows and columns. The rows represent the initial consonant sounds in Mandarin, while the columns represent the final vowel sounds. The combination of an initial sound and a final sound forms a pinyin syllable.
Every possible combination is presented in the table. Thus, every possible sound in the Mandarin Chinese language can be found in this table, including the different tones for each syllable.
If you struggle with your pronunciation and tones, having this chart by your side is invaluable for hearing the correct sounds and for practice.
Pay careful attention to common sticking points for learners like the retroflex initials “zh/ch/sh” and their non-retroflex counterparts “z/c/s”. When pronouncing retroflex sounds, one has to curl the tongue upwards and softly touch your palate to reproduce those sounds.
You can hear and practice your pronunciation and tones with an interactive pinyin chart like this one.
Pinyin English Approximations
The pinyin chart is helpful but some sounds were still difficult to reproduce no matter how many times I heard it correctly pronounced in the chart. In these situations, I turned to English approximations of Pinyin.
It’s important to note that the Latin alphabet used in the pinyin system does not map perfectly to how it is pronounced in English.
For example, the “q” in pinyin (as in the character 强/qiang) sounds similar to 'ch' in the English ‘cheap’. This is why it's helpful to have English approximations for each initial and final.
Use the below cheat sheet for approximations of similar sounds in English words. This is very helpful if you have trouble distinguishing certain sounds that are not so common in your native language.
For example, a common challenge is distinguishing the initial “j” and “zh”. “J” is similar to “j” in the English word “jeep” while “zh” is similar to “j” in the English word “jam”.
Initials
Finals
In Practice
I recommend practicing your pronunciation and tones with an interactive pinyin chart. Click on any tone and focus on hearing the difference between the initials and the finals. The pinyin chart will help you to associate the pinyin spelling with the corresponding Mandarin sounds.
Slowly make your way through all of the cells and familiarize yourself with the different sounds and syllables of the language. Or focus on specific syllables that you struggle with and play them over and over to get familiar with the sounds.
Use the English approximations to help with difficult-to-pronounce sounds.
Having a good foundation in pinyin will help your pronunciation, listening, speaking, reading, writing, and ability to look up words and build new vocabulary.
Trying to improve your pronunciation alone can be very tricky. That’s why this month I’m helping a few students with a case study to improve your pronunciation and speaking with personalized feedback. If you want help message me “SPEAK” here or email me at danyopang@gmail.com.
学如登山,
Danyo
PS Here are some other ways I can help you level up your Chinese:
Copy Paste Speaking Course: The self-directed system I used to learn to get conversational, improve my listening and pronunciation and speak Chinese like native speakers
Language Learner OS: This is a digital system to help organize your language studies, track vocabulary, build connections, stay productive, and learn faster!
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