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i
Hànyǔ pīnyīn
jièshào
Introduction to Mandarin Pronunciation
Hanyu Pinyin
System
Chinese Language is not an alphabetic language like English and
Malay. It differs from alphabetic languages in that its written form is not
directly related to its pronunciation. This has made many non-native
speakers of Chinese find it difficult to pronounce and to learn words in
the written form of the language, which is also called characters. This
difficulty has now been partly overcome by the introduction of the
Chinese Phonetic Scheme, or more commonly knowns as the
Hanyu
Pinyin
system. The
Hanyu Pinyin
system adopts the
Latin
alphabets as
its symbols to provide phonetic notation for Chinese characters and to
transcribe Chinese sounds.
The Finals and the Initials
A simple Chinese syllable is formed by three components which
are initial, final and tone. There will be an initial at the front and a final at
the back. A tone mark will be placed above the final.
The Chinese syllables are usually formed by an initial and a final.
An initial is a consonant that begins the syllable and a final constitutes
the rest of the syllable. From the picture in the front page, the syllable
“hǎo”
was formed by the initial
“
h
”
and the final
“
ao
”
. There are 21 initials
and 38 finals in Chinese phonetics.