Learn Pinyin - 拼音

Pinyin, short for Hanyu Pinyin, means "phonetic notation" or "phonetic symbols". Pin means "spelling" and Yin means "sound(s)". Pinyin is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard Mandarin. There are 21 initials/consonants and 35 finals/vowels in Mandarin.

Pronunciation of Mandarin comes with two aspects: syllables and tones. Each can be practised separately, but when it comes to speaking, learners must pronounce words with proper tones. 

A Mandarin syllable consists of three components: an initial, a final and a tone. The initial and final sounds make a total of 56 basic sounds. Combinations of initials and finals, and the special cases result in more than 400 mono-syllabic sounds. By applying the four tones to the sounds, Standard Mandarin makes a total of around 1,600 unique syllables.  

Initials and Finals
The pronunciation of Chinese Pinyin is generally given in terms of initials and finals, which represent the segmental phonemic portion of the language, rather than letter by letter. Initials are initial consonants, while finals are all possible combinations of semivowels coming before the vowel, the nucleus vowel, and final vowel or consonant.  

A semivowel is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.

Tones
Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language. Each Chinese character/syllable has a tone. The same syllable can have 5 possible ways to pronounce by varying the tone (pitch). There are four main tones and a neutral tone (轻声qīngshēng) in Mandarin. One syllable, pronounced in different tones will usually mean different things. This fact makes the tone training a fundamentally important part of Mandarin learners. So, even if you can pronounce the pinyin of a Chinese character correctly but if you do not master tones, Chinese speakers will not understand you.

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"拼音"是"汉语拼音"的缩写，意思是"拼音符号"。"拼"表示"拼写"，"音"表示"声音"。汉语拼音同时是将汉字转写为拉丁字母的规范方式。汉语有21个声母/辅音和35个韵母/元音。

汉语的发音由两个方面组成：音节和音调。两者可以分开练习，但在说话时，学习者必须使用适当的音调发音。

汉语的形式构成分为声母、韵母和声调三部分。汉字的21个声母和35个韵母，组成56个音素。这些音素构成超过400个音节,再把四个声调计入,则共创造出大约1600个独特的音节,汉字的句子和词语正是由这些单音节的字组成。

声母和韵母
汉语拼音的发音一般是以声母和韵母的形成的，它们代表整体语言的部分音素，而不是逐个字母来发音。声母是辅音，而韵母则是由元音，核元音和后元音或辅音之前出现的所有可能的半元音组合形成。

半元音具有元音的语音特性，但起辅音的音系作用的非音节性音段，通常是个滑音。

声调
每个汉字/音节都有一个声调。现代汉语(中文)中有四个声调以及轻声，其声调符号借鉴了五度标记法。一个音节以不同的音调发音通常意味着不同的事物。这使得声调训练成为汉语拼音学习者的基本重要部分。所以，为了让听者了解你的所要表达的意思，你必需掌握正确的发音和语调。

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