What is pinyin?
Mandarin characters don’t tell you how to pronounce a word.
They are more like pictures that represent an object or an idea.
Pinyin was invented to help those learning Mandarin with pronunciation - Check your connection, refresh the page and try again.pīn yīn literally translates to ‘spell sound’.
For example it is impossible to tell, from looking at it, how the Mandarin character for mountain 山 is pronounced, so we use the pinyin shān to give its sound - Check your connection, refresh the page and try again..
Pinyin with Burt Bessington
Burt: Hi and welcome to Words of the World!
By looking at this Mandarin character can you pronounce the word?
Boy: Ur… No?
Burt: Correct! Mandarin characters don't give us the sound of a word, so the Chinese invented pinyin to help their learners.
They took the letters of the Roman alphabet, the same we use for English, and used it to create 23 initials, the start of a syllable, and 36 finals, the end of the syllable.
And with four tones plus a neutral tone, we can create every sound in the Mandarin language.
Give these a go!
Dad: Pà?
Boy: Mìng!
Dad: Nào!
Burt: You're doing great!
Many pinyin sounds are similar to English, but be careful because some are different.
For example, in English we might we might pronounce this ‘zee’ but in Mandarin this is pronounced ‘jer’, and in English this looks like ‘chee’ but in Mandarin it's ‘chur’.
And in Mandarin these finals sound like this… Huà. Huò.
Now try these!
Dad: Zuò?
Boy: Tòu!
Both: Suì!
Burt: Ooh, that's all we have time for today.
And looking at the scores you've won your very own, fantastic, one of a kind… Pet rock!
How is Pinyin formed?
Pinyin uses all the same letters of the alphabet as English, except for 'v', to form:
Here are some examples:
| Mandarin | Pinyin | English |
|---|---|---|
| Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. | kāi | open |
| Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. | rén | man |
| Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. | shuǐ | water |
| Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. | mù | wood |
| Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. | ma | a question particle |
The marks over the letters indicate which tone is used in the pronunciation, helping to make it clear which word you are saying.
Did you know?
Some words with different characters and different meanings are written exactly the same in pinyin.
For example:
Check your connection, refresh the page and try again.shǒu shì - gesture
Check your connection, refresh the page and try again.shǒu shì - jewellery
These are called homophones.
Differences between pinyin and English
Pinyin was not created for English speakers, so whilst there are similarities, there are also important differences:
some pinyin sounds don’t exist in English
some pinyin is pronounced differently than English
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