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Introduction

The Chinese language has the most native speakers: 1.34 billion (2010). If the number of non-native Chinese speakers are added to this figure, then there are approximately 1.57 billion speakers. This means Chinese is the top language in terms of number of speakers. In terms of Internet users using Chinese as their main language, Chinese comes second after the English language. The latest (2010) statistics estimates Internet users using Chinese as their main language online to be 445 million, which is equivalent to about 33% of the world population. This is second only to the number of English-language Internet users (approximately 536.6 million, or about 42% of the world population).

As China grows in importance as a world economy as well as a tourist destination, it is expected that more and more people will learn Chinese for leisure and business purposes.

Pinyin: Romanization of Chinese sounds

As Chinese writing normally does not indicate pronunciation, a romanization scheme, known as pinyin, is used to represent the sounds and tones of Chinese. Pinyin is useful for learning the phonetics of Chinese.

In this dictionary, pinyin is given for each Chinese word or phrase. This enables the user to master the correct pronunciation of Chinese words.

Tones

Chinese is a tonal language, that is, a sound pronounced in different tones is understood as different sounds. So the tone is an indispensable component of the pronunciation of a Chinese word. There are four basic tones, shown by the diagram below:

In Chinese speech, as in English speech, some sounds are unstressed, i.e. pronounced short and soft. They do not have any of the four tones. Such sounds are said to have Neutral Tone. Sounds with the neutral tone are not marked. For example in 爸爸 bàba (daddy) the first syllable is pronounced in the fourth tone and the second syllable in the neutral tone, i.e. unstressed.

TONE CHANGES

Tones may undergo changes in actual speech (“tone sandhi”). The third tone, when followed by a first, second, fourth or neutral tone sound, loses its final rise and stops at the low pitch. Followed by another third tone sound, it becomes the second tone. This is a general rule and the notation of third tone sounds remains unchanged.

For example, in 所以 suǒyǐ (therefore, so), notation remains the third tone for both syllables, but the word is actually pronounced like suóyǐ.

Two important words 不 bù (no) and 一 yī (one) also undergo tone changes. You will find the details of their tone changes under these entries.