Chinese Pinyin

Chinese language uses characters instead of alphabets in its writing system.

To represent the phonetic sound for each of the characters, a romanization system called Pinyin was introduced in 1957 in Mainland China, and has been widely accepted as a standard.

Each Chinese character has only 1 syllable, and this syllable is represented by an optional initial (a consonant) and a final (a vowel plus an optional nasal sound or suffix) in pinyin.

Notice that when there is no initial consonant, a semi consonant y or w needs to be added before the vowels i, u and ü. (see spelling rules below).

Pay special attention to consonant z, c, s, zh, ch, sh and r. Their spellings are somewhat related to the English alphabets, but their pronunciations are very different.

All Mandarin Chinese sounds are simply a combination of these initials and finals.

Mandarin Tones and Tone Marks

There are 4 tones (plus a neutral tone) in Mandarin Chinese.

A Chinese character could only be associated with a phonetic sound with tone.

As a result, it is extremely important to distinguish (and be able to say) the 4 different tones in Mandarin Chinese.

A tone mark is usually added on top of the pinyin main vowel to represent its tone:

1. ˉ (1st tone - high level)
2. ˊ (2nd tone - high rising)
3. ˇ (3rd tone - low dipping)
4. ˋ (4th tone - high falling)
5. no tone mark for neutral tone

A neutral tone can never be a starting tone in a phrase. Its pitch is entirely determined by the tone of its preceding syllables.

Tone Mark Placement

Use the following rules to determine where to place a tone mark on a pinyin.

1. It is always placed over a vowel letter.
2. In complex vowels, the precedence is a, e and then o.
3. In all other cases (ui and iu), the final vowel takes the tone mark.

Pinyin Spelling Rules

Please pay special attention to how the spelling in pinyin varies in some cases.

1. syllables starting with i is replaced by y. standalone i is written as yi.
2. syllables starting with u is replaced by w. standalone u is written as wu.
3. syllables starting with ü is replaced by yu.
4. ü is always written as u except in 4 cases: lü, nü, lüe and nüe
5. abbreviations of uo following initial b, p, m, f: although they should be pronounced as buo, puo, muo, fuo, they are written as bo, po mo, fo respectively.
6. abbreviations of iou, uei, uen, ueng with initials: these should still be pronounced as iou, uei, uen and ueng, but they are written as iu, ui, un and ong respectively.
7. abbreviations of er: er is often written as r when attached as a suffix to a final.