Pinyin System Hanyu Pinyin System Chinese is called

Pinyin System (Hanyu Pinyin System)

Chinese is called Hanyu in Chinese because it is spoken by the Han people, the largest ethnic group in China.

Pinyin was developed in Mainland China in the 1950 s and officially adopted in 1979.

Pinyin, which literally means “spell the sounds, ” is used to help people learn the pronunciation of characters or look up words in dictionaries, and type Chinese characters on computer.

Pinyin System. It uses the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and tone marks to represent the sounds of Chinese. Many of the letters are pronounced much as they are in English, while others are pronounced quite differently.

• Pinyin consists of 21 initials, 35 finals and 4 tones. • Initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s •

Initials b • d • g • • p t k m n h f l

• • Initials j q x

Initials • • z c s • The letter z sounds like “ds” in English “lads. ” • The letter c sounds like “ts” in English “cats. ” • The letter s is very similar to “s” in English “son. ”

Initials • zh ch sh • r

Finals • Finals: • Simple finals: a, o, e, I, u, ü • Compound finals: main vowel + secondary vowel • Nasal finals: finals ending with n and ng

Structure of Pinyin Syllable • A Chinese syllable has three elements: • Initial, final, and tone. • Tone • Initial Final • • mǎ

Tones and Tone Marks • Chinese is a tonal language. The 4 basic tones in Mandarin Chinese are: • 1 st Tone 2 nd Tone 3 rd Tone 4 th Tone • High & level rising dipping falling • down & up • __ / ˅ • Neutral tone: light, no marking: ma

Tones and Tone Marks • • Different tones indicate different meanings For example: 1 st 2 nd 3 rd 4 th mā má mǎ mà mother hemp horse to scold Māmā mà mǎ Mother is scolding the horse. Mǎ mà māmā The horse is scolding mom. bā eight bá to pull out bǎ dā dá dǎ to build up to answer to hit bà dà big

15

a Finals o e i u ü 16

b, p, m, f + o bō bó bǒ bò wave uncle lame thumb pō pó pǒ pò mō mó mǒ mò fō fó fǒ fò

Read the following tongue twister • • • bóbo uncle bàba dad mǎ horse bóbo de mǎ bàba de é Uncle’s horse, Father’s goose.

Read the following tongue twister • • bóbo bàba mǎ pá dǎ tǔpō lǜpō uncle dad horse to climb to hit, play muddy slope green water

Read the following tongue twister • • • Bóbo de mǎ Uncle’s horse, Bàba de é Father’s goose. Mǎ pá tǔpō The horse is climbing a muddy slope, É dǎ lǜ The goose is playing in the green water.