A Brief Introduction to Romanized spelling system of Chinese - Pinyin


The phonological system of the modern standard language in Chinese, Putonghua or Guoyu, can be represented by letters. Of all the letters of English alphabet, 25 letters are used for Pinyin. Letter 'v' is not used, while letter 'ü' is added to represent the vowel sound 'yu'.

Consonant letters

    There are 20 consonant letters use in Putonghua. Letter 'V' is not used. Three consonants are represented by combinations of two letters - 'zh', 'ch' and 'sh':
 

b

p

m

f

d

t

n

l

g

k

h

 

j

q

x

 

z

c

s

 

zh

ch

sh

r

y

w

Note:


Vowel letters

    There are 6 vowel letters used in Putonghua:
 

a

o

e

i

u

ü

Tones

    There are four tones in Putonghua: the 1st tone, the 2nd tone, the 3rd tone and the 4th tone. They are superimposed over the main vowel of a syllable and represented by diacritic markers.
 

1st ton: high and long
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/pcr/soundsys/ma1.gif

2nd tone: rising and long
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/pcr/soundsys/ma2.gif

3rd tone: low and short
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/pcr/soundsys/ma3.gif

4th tone: falling and short
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/pcr/soundsys/ma4.gif

Syllables

    Syllables are composed by consonants, vowels and tone. According to the trational notation, a syllable is composed by a 'initial' and a 'final'. An initial is the first sound of a syllable, usually, a consonant. A final is the rest part of the syllable. The final can be a single vowel, or a combination of vowels, or combination of vowels and nasals 'n' or 'ng': For example: (the following syllables are not human voice, they are produced by Bell-lab automatic speech synthecizing program)
 

Single vowel

a, i, u

Combination of vowels

ao, ia

Combination of a vowel and a nasal

an, en, in, ang, eng, ing

Combination of vowels and a nasal

uan, uang, iong

Combination of  consonant and a vowel

wǒ, nǐ, tā

Combination of consonant, vowel and consonant

nín, lán, mén, lín

Other possible combinations

nóng, zhōng, chuān

 


For more detailed introduction to Chinese pronunciation and Romanization click here.

For more resources on Chinese pronunciation click here.