• Chinese Pinyin – Initials
• Chinese Pinyin – Finals
• Chinese Pinyin – Tone
• The origin of Chinese Character
• Character writing

4.4.1 Chinese Pinyin

Chinese is a phonetic language, and its characters stem from pictographs. For a long time, the only way students of Chinese were able to read the language was through memorization of each individual character. Imagine the time that took! A genius developed a system of transcribing Chinese phonetics using the Roman alphabet to help people read Chinese. This is Pinyin.

Once you master Pinyin you’ll know how to pronounce any word in Mandarin using a Chinese dictionary. Pinyin is also the most common way to input Chinese characters into a computer. Although Pinyin and English both use the Roman alphabet, many letters are not expressed with the same sounds that English uses.

Each character in Chinese is pronounced with one syllable, which expressed in Pinyin, is made up of an initial, a final, and a tone. There are 21 sounds representing the beginning of the character, initials, and 35 sounds representing the end of the character, finals. These combine to form about 420 different sounds. Add one of the four tones which change the pitch and are depicted by marks place above the letters, and you’ve got yourself a Chinese character! Remember, each character in Chinese doesn’t necessarily mean an entire word, and there are almost limitless combinations of characters that form to make different words. Don’t worry if all of this sounds confusing to you, once you get the ball rolling, the learning will be hard to stop!

So, in conclusion, a character can be depicted as follows:

For example

tian (sky): “T” is the initial, “ian” is the final, and is the (first) tone mark placed over the main vowel.

Initials

A Chinese character has only one syllable, which consists of two parts: an initial (consonant) and a final (vowel). The consonants always appear initially in a syllable. There are 21 initials for the standard Chinese pronunciation and they fall into six groups as follows:

b	p	m	f
d	t	n	l
g	k	h
j	q	x
z	c	s
zh	ch	sh	r

Approximate equivalents in English:

‘b’ is like ‘p’ in ‘sport’.
‘d’ is like ‘t’ in ‘star’.
‘g’ is like ‘g’ in ‘get’.
‘j’ is like “jee” in “jeep.”
‘z’ is like the sound of ‘ds' in 'beds'.
‘zh’ is like ‘j’ in ‘job’.
‘p’ is like ‘p’ in ‘pet’.
‘t’ is like ‘t” in ‘talk’.
‘k’ is like ‘c’ in ‘cat’.
‘q’ sounds like “chee” in “cheese.”
‘c’ is like ‘ts’ in ‘nets’.
‘ch’ is like ‘ch’ in ‘chocolate’.
‘m’ is like ‘m’ in ‘music’.
‘f’ is like ‘f’ in ‘fox’.
‘n’ is like ‘n’ in ‘nuts’.
‘x’ sounds like “shee” in “sheep”
‘s’ is like ‘s’ in ‘simple’.
‘sh’ is like ‘sh’ in ‘shark’.
‘r’ is like ‘r’ in ‘rock’.

tone

Character = Initial + Final

Finals

There are two kinds of finals in the Chinese phonetic alphabet, single finals and compound finals. Their positions are in the rear of a syllable. There are six simple finals which are noted here by a blue link.

	I	u	ü
A	Ia	ua
O		uo
E	Ie		üe
Ai		uai
Ei		uei
Ao	Iao
Ou	Iou
An	Ian	uan	üan
En	In	uen	ün
ang	Iang	uang
eng	Ing	ueng
ong	Iong

Approximate equivalent pronunciation in English :

‘a’ is like the pronunciation of ‘a.’
‘o’ is like ‘wh’ in ‘what’.
‘e’ is like ‘ir’ in ‘first’.
‘I’ is like ‘ee’ in ‘bee’.
‘u’is like ‘oo’ in ‘look’.
‘ü’ is like “eu” in “pneumonia.”
‘ai’ is close to ‘ye’ in ‘bye’.
‘ei’ is close to ‘a’ in ‘lake’.
‘ao’is like ‘o’ in ‘dog’.
‘ou’ is like ‘ow’ in ‘show’.
‘an’ is like ‘an’ in ‘can’.
‘en’ is like ‘en’ in ‘hen’.
‘ang’ is like ‘ong’ in ‘long’.

Tones

In Mandarin, words that have the same pronunciation can have different meanings depending on how the word is said. The "tone" of a word describes how the pitch changes as the word is said. There are four "tones" in Mandarin. The tones are represented in pinyin by marks above the words and are read from left to right. The absence of a tone also has meaning.

For example, the word "ma" can have a number of different meanings depending on how it is said.

Word with tone	Meaning	Description of tone	Name of tone
mā	Mother	The straight line over the word indicates that the word should be said with a flat and unchanging high tone.	1st tone
má	To bother	The mark going up above the word indicates the word should be said in a rising tone.	2nd tone
mǎ	Horse	The down and then up mark above the word indicates that the word should be said with a falling and then rising tone.	3rd tone
mà	To scold	The down mark above the word indicates that the word should be said with a falling tone.	4th tone
ma	Grammatical marker used in a question.	When a word has no tone or mark above the word it is said to be neutral and is pronounced in an abbreviated manner with no emphasis.	Neutral

The following diagram shows how the tones are pronounced in relation to each other.

Chinese characters

Do you want to insert some sort of exercise here so they can practice? Or you can say, “refer to lesson 1 in ….. for additional practice”

The origin of Chinese characters

Chinese is one of the world’s oldest language systems. The formation of its written language, characters, have played a significant role in the development of Chinese culture. Among the most ancient languages, only Chinese characters remain in popular use today.

Based on pictographs, Chinese characters combine shapes with sounds and connotations to form unique, block-shaped characters that carry lots of meaning. Archaeological researchers have discovered many such signs carved on earthenware excavated from Banpo Village in Xi'an City and Jiangzhai Village in Lintong. The etchings were carved during the Yangshao Culture Period some 6,000 years ago. More than 4,000 years ago, people living in the Tai'an area of Shandong Province also carved signs on earthenware. The character "旦" (dan in pin yin, meaning dawn), for instance; the sun (日) rises upwards, crossing the mountains and passing through cloud layers to tell people a new day has begun. It is safe to say that the earthenware carvings are the first signs of Chinese characters, which originated from drawings.

The most sophisticated and earliest Chinese characters are the inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones called Jiaguwen of the Shang Dynasty (17th-11th century BC) that resemble drawings. To date, China has unearthed 150,000 pieces of animal bone and tortoise shell, including more than 4,600 distinctive Chinese characters, among which more than 1,700 have been identified. The inscriptions on bones and shells consist of phrases and simple sentences, providing much insight into the Shang Dynasty. Modern Chinese characters top 60,000, among which about 3,000 are commonly used.

Character writing

Chinese characters are more of an art form than anything else. The strokes forming each character must be written in a certain order. There are very few rules for writing, but what regulations there are, you need to follow them strictly in order to write characters correctly. Learning how form characters might be a bit time-consuming, but this knowledge will make remembering the character easier. Your character will also look better if you write them the right way. In China, calligraphy is a highly regarded art form. Here are the rules. Remember them!

The middle is written before the sides.

Write from top to bottom.

Write from left to right.

Horizontally strokes are drawn before vertical strokes.

Finish writing what is inside the box before you close it.

Write from the outside in.

The top left corner must be written first.

Boxes are completed before strokes that cut through them.

This chart you created is very confusing…I get the idea because I know how to write the characters, but can you figure out a different way to explain how to form Chinese characters? Especially the last three points…the one I highlighted I don’t understand at all, and the last two…well, you wrote that the bottom right dot should be last, and then you explained the top right dot is last…so which is it? Here, maybe you should have a demo, too…or a link to your demo page.

Download character writing paper here