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Pinyin 拼音 Pīn yīn

An ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Zi, said: “A journey of a thousand miles starts with one single step.”

So, now that you have this book open, what next? What is that first single step in learning Chinese? It’s learning pinyin!

Pinyin is a Romanized spelling system. When we learn English, we start with A, B, and C; and in learning Chinese, we start with pinyin. Did you know that Chinese children begin learning pinyin before they start to learn Chinese characters? It’s used like the phonetic symbol system used in English: it shows us how to pronounce sounds, and then characters. And most of the pronunciations are similar to those of the English letters.

When you become familiar with pinyin, you will feel like you have a strong pair of wings and are able to fly freely among Chinese characters, just the way native Chinese speakers do in speaking, reading, and writing this language.

Okay, let’s start to learn pinyin. First of all, you need to know that pinyin is composed of three elements: initials, finals, and tones. What are initials? Take a look at the chart below, and turn on your audio. Follow along with me and read the initials out loud.

Unit 1 Consonants/Initials 第一单元—声母

There are 23 initials in Chinese.

b	p	m	f
d	t	n	l
g	k	h
j	q	x
z	c	s
zh	ch	sh	r
y	w

The sound of some initials is similar to that of English letters:

b like “b” in ball	p like “p” in push	m like “m” in mine	f like “f” in far
d like “d” in day	t like “t” in tea	n like “n” in name	l like “l” in look
g like “g” in girl	k like “k” in kind	h like “h” in hot
j like “j” in just	q like “ch” in cheese	x like “sh” in sheep
z like “ds” in reads	c like “ts” in sits	s like “s” in silk
zh like “dge” in judge	ch like “ch” in rich	sh like “sh” in shop	r like “r” in rubber
y like “y” in yellow	w like “w” in way

When you read, you will find that the letters Z, C, S, Zh, Ch, Sh, R, and X are not quite as easy to pronounce. This is because there are no sounds exactly like them in English. Don’t worry about it, because correct sounds will come to you with more practice. Let’s repeat them one more time, as you play the recording again.

See, you sound better already.

Now we move onto Unit 2: Vowels/Finals. Listen to the audio of vowels/finals, and repeat the sounds you hear as you read the table.

Unit 2 Vowels/Finals 第二单元—韵母

a	o	e
i	u	ü

a like “a” in spa	o like “o” in voice	e like “ear” in earn
i: a long e sound, like “ee” in feet	u like “oo” in boom	ü like “u” in French tu or “ü” in German Führer.

Finals are much easier, right? These six are the basic and most common finals.

Since you have learned “Initials” and “Finals” now, I’ll tell you some encouraging facts: most Chinese words are pronounced by combining initials and finals. Look at these three simple Chinese words:

I — wǒ You — nǐ He — tā

You can see that when the initial “w” and the final “o” combine, they form a Chinese word “wǒ” which means “I” in English. The words nǐ (you) and tā (he) follow the same rule. Not difficult, right?

But, you may be wondering what that extra stuff is on top of the “o”, “i” and “a”? Good question! These mark the “tones” in Chinese. Since you asked, we’ll learn tones now.

Tones are sounds that happen when you move your voice in different ways as you speak. There are four tones and one neutral tone in Chinese. Let’s take a closer look.

Unit 3 Tones 第三单元—声调

Look at the table below. We’ll use the word “yu” as an example. We’ll discuss its meanings later.

Tone	Mark	Description
1st	yū	Flat or high level tone
2nd	yú	Starts medium in tone, then rises to the top
3rd	yǔ	Starts low, dips to the bottom, then rises toward the top
4th	yù	Starts at the top, then falls sharp and strong to the bottom
Neutral tone	yu	Flat, with no emphasis; it’s shorter and lower in pitch than the 1st tone.

If we put the descriptions into a visual form—sketch them out—we get a graph like this:

Four tones graph

Now, follow along with me: we are going to read yu with each of the four tones. You may use your fingertip to trace over the appropriate mark on the graph above, as you speak each one. Pay attention to how your finger and your voice move up and down to reach different “pitch” levels.

Tone	Mark	Meaning
1st	淤 yū	become silted up
2nd	鱼 yú	fish
3rd	雨 yǔ	rain
4th	玉 yù	jade
Neutral tone	yu	Not every Chinese character has a neutral tone. Many particle words have neutral tones, such as ma—吗, ne—呢, etc. You’ll see that in the next chapter.

Great work—now you know how tones are made and how different they sound. And just as with yu above, remember that one character can have four different tones, and that same character pronounced with different tones can have different meanings. In Chinese, there are some characters that you don’t have to pronounce with an exactly accurate tone (because there is not much risk of confusion); but for others, you have to pronounce their tones correctly. For example, the word mai: with third tone mǎi 买 means “buy”; but with fourth tone mài 卖 means “sell”! What a big difference in their meanings! You don’t want to get this wrong when you shop in China.

Okay! Now that you have learned what pinyin is all about, and you know the initials, finals, and tones, it’s time to use them. You will see that you’re able to speak Chinese sentences already. Listen to the audio and follow along with me to read some “Practice Pinyin.” Nice and loud…

Practice Pinyin 拼音练习

bā	bá	bǎ	bà
gē	gé	gě	gè
mēi	méi	měi	mèi
wō	wó	wǒ	wò
hē	hé	hě	hè
mā	má	mǎ	mà
jiē	jié	jiě	jiè
dī	dí	dǐ	dì
yōu	yóu	yǒu	yòu

Sentence 1

I have dad, mom, an older brother, an older sister, a younger sister, and a younger brother.

Wǒ yǒu bà ba, mā ma, gē ge, jiě jie, mèi mei hé dì di.

我 有 爸 爸，妈 妈，哥哥，姐姐，妹 妹 和弟弟。

Let’s keep practicing:

shī	shí	shǐ	shì
guō	guó	guǒ	guò
zāi	zái	zǎi	zài
zhōng	zhóng	zhǒng	zhòng
mēi	méi	měi	mèi
rēn	rén	rěn	rèn
xuē	xué	xuě	xuè
wēn	wén	wěn	wèn

Sentence 2

I’m American. I’m learning Chinese.

Wǒ shì měi guó rén. Wǒ zài xué zhōng wén.

我 是 美 国 人。我 在 学 中 文。

Ho, ho! You have now spoken two very important sentences. Practice them with your friends and family. They’ll be surprised with your progress in your first lesson. You’re able to speak some real Chinese sentences! Not bad!

Now, take a break, and then we’ll start a new chapter. There are a lot of interesting things ahead for you to learn.

Note 注释

The pinyin system has some rules which you need to know. I don’t want to go through them one by one here, because it would be too dry for you. Instead I will discuss these rules in the following chapters using examples, to make the pinyin rules easier for you to learn and to memorize.

Wǒ kě yǐ jìn lái ma?

May I come in?

Měi gè rén dōu xǐ huān zhōng guó cài.

Everyone loves Chinese food.

Hěn gāo xìng jiàn dào nǐ.

Nice to see you.