Phonetics

The Chinese Phonetic Alphabet

On February 21, 1958, the First Plenary Session of the First National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China adopted "The Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet", a set of symbols used to transliterate Chinese characters and combine the speech sounds of the common speech into syllables. The scheme makes use of the Latin alphabet, modified to meet the needs of the Chinese language. The scheme, which will form the foundation for the creation of a Chinese alphabetic system of writing, is being used throughout the country to facilitate the learning of Chinese characters, help unify pronunciation and popularize the common speech. The scheme has for years been used among foreign learners of Chinese as well and has been found much useful and helpful.

The Chinese phonetic alphabet is called "Hanyu Pinyin".
   The Chinese syllable is usually composed of an initial and a final, and each syllable has four    different tones. The initial is a consonant that begins the syllable and the final is the rest of the    syllable. An initial cannot make a Chinese word, as it is not a syllabic sound.

Initials
   There are 21 initials in Chinese: Listen how they are pronounced:

Labials	b	p	m	f
Alveolars	d	t	n	l
Blade-alveolars	z	c	s
Blade-palatals	zh	ch	sh	r
Alveolars	j	q	x
Velars	g	k	h

To learn how to pronounce each initial, please visit this website:

http://www.wellgot.ca/phonetic/initials.htm

Finals
   A final in Chinese is a vowel, which may be a simple vowel (simple final) or a compound vowel (compound    final), or a vowel plus a nasal consonant (nasal final). Some syllables may be without an initial, for example,    "a" (a modal particle), but no syllable can do without a final.

   There are 35 finals in Chinese:

Simple finals:
a	o	e	i	u	ü
Compound finals
ai	ei	ao	ou
ia	ie	iao	iu
ua	uo	uai	ui	üe
Nasal finals
an	en	ang	eng	ong
ian	in	iang	ing	iong
uan	un	uang		ueng
üan	ün

  To learn how to pronounce each final, please visit:

  http://www.wellgot.ca/phonetic/finals.htm

To learn how to pronounce"The Four Tones" in Mandarin Chinese, please visit:

     http://www.wellgot.ca/phonetic/4tones-e.htm

For more information about to the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, please visit:

http://www.wellgot.ca/phonetic/preface-e.htm

http://www.wlu.edu/~hhill/tlit.html