Mandarin - Lesson #2

This week's lesson focused on pinyin and pronunciation.

In terms of pronunciation, we have initials, finals and syllables.

Syllables (which are words put together from initials and/or finals) can stand without initials but they MUST have a final. There are some rules in regards to spellings and letters being added in front of finals but I've not quite got my head around all that yet.

Initials - b p m f d t n l g k h

Finals - a o e i u ü ai ei ao ou

It took a while for me to get my head around how to sound these out, it's very different to English and they all have a very elongated sound in comparison. 

Here are some of the notes I made for myself to remember roughly how to sound these out.

Initials

b p m f - I likened the sound of these to 'wor' 

e.g. 'bwooor', 'pwooor'

d t n l g k h - I likened the sound of these to 'ugh' 

e.g. 'duuugh', 'tuuugh'

Finals

i - 'ee' (like in the Japanese word 'usagi')
ü - 'yu'
ai - 'aye' (I pronounce this like in Japanese also)
ei - 'A'
ao - 'oww'
ou - 'ohh'

Our teacher gave us a pinyin chart with lots of variations on with a link. On the website, there are sound functions which allow you to play the sound of each initial/ final/ syllable in all 4 tones. 

https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-pinyin-chart.php

These are things that I find helpful personally, hopefully they will also be of help to anyone else who is also learning Mandarin and find it tricky to remember or get their head around how to sound out the letters/ words!

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Which do you find the hardest to sound out?
Top tip - elongaaate!

- Part Time 小姐