Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Pronunciation
There are four possible
tones
in Mandarin Chinese, and every syllable of every
word is characterized by one of them, except for a few syllables, which are consid-
ered toneless. In English, to change the tone is to change the mood or the emphasis;
in Chinese, to change the tone is to change the word itself. The tones are:
First
or “high”
a e i o u
. In English this level tone is used when mimicking
robotic or very boring, flat voices.
Second
or “rising”
á é í ó ú
. Used in English when asking a question showing
surprise, for example “
eh
?”
Third
or “falling-rising” ! . Used in English when echoing someone's
words with a measure of incredulity. For example, “John's dead.” “
De-ad
?!”
Fourth
or “falling”
à è ì ò ù
. Often used in English when counting in a brusque
manner - “
One! Two! Three! Four!
”.
To neless
A few syllables do not have a tone accent. These are pronounced
without emphasis, such as in the English
u
pon.
Note that when two words with the third tone occur consecutively, the first
word is pronounced as though it carries the second tone. Thus
nn
(meaning
“you”) and
h
o
(“well, good”), when combined, are pronounced
ní h
o
meaning “how are you?”
Consonants
Most consonants, as written in
pinyin
, are pronounced in a similar way to their
English equivalents, with the following exceptions:
c
as in ha
ts
g
is hard as in
g
od (except when preceded by “n”, when it sounds like sa
ng
)
q
as in
ch
eese
x
has no direct equivalent in English, but you can make the sound by sliding
from an “s” to an “sh” sound and stopping midway between the two
z
as in su
ds
zh
as in fu
dg
e
Vowels and diphthongs
As in most languages, the vowel sounds are rather harder to quantify than the
consonants. The examples below give a rough description of the sound of each
vowel as written in
pinyin
.
a
usually somewhere between f
f r and m
a
n
ai
as in
eye
ao
as in c
ow
e
usually as in f
f r
ei
as in g
ay
en
as in hyph
en
eng
as in s
ung
er
as in b
ar
with a pronounced “r”
i
usually as in b
ee
, except in
zi
,
ci
,
si
,
ri
,
zhi
,
chi
and
shi
, when
i
is a short, clipped
sound, like the American military “s
i
r”.
ia
as in
ya
k
ian
as in
yen
ie
as in
yeah
o
as in s
aw
ou
as in sh
ow
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