Although Chinese language consists of varieties of spoken Chinese such as Cantonese, Xiang, Min and Wu, Mandarin Chinese (called Putonghua in China or Guoyu in Taiwan) or Northern Chinese, the common dialect, is the official language for Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore, about one-fifth of the world’s population, or over one billion people, speak it. The language is taught in all those nations’ schools.
Written Chinese (Hanzi) consists of about 50,000 characters. The Chinese writing system is logographic, meaning that each character stands for a word or part of a word. A person who knows about 4,000 of the most frequently used characters can read a Chinese newspaper or modern novel. The earliest forms of Chinese script were pictographs. The characters, also called graphs, were drawings or pictures of the objects they represented. As Chinese script developed, characters became more simplified and less pictographic.
Chinese is spoken with no tenses. For example, the sentence Ta shi xuezhe could mean He is a scholar or He was a scholar, depending on how it is used. Many language experts consider Chinese to be monosyllabic—that is, almost all the words have only one syllable. Even words of more than one syllable can be broken down into single-syllable words. For example, xuezhe (scholar) consists of two single-syllable words—xue (learn) and zhe (one who).
Designed in the People’s Republic of China during the mid-1950s, Pinyin is a phonetic system of the Chinese language. It uses the English alphabet to transcribe Chinese sounds. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as the international standard in 1982 and it has also been accepted by the United Nations and many other international institutions. Pinyin has replaced the Wade-Giles system and other writing systems that use the Roman alphabet. Two British diplomats, Thomas Wade and Herbert Giles, developed this system during the late 1800's and early 1900's. Pinyin is used to teach Chinese schoolchildren and foreign learners the standard pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese, to spell Chinese names in foreign publications and to enter Chinese characters (Hanzi) on computers. You will learn to use Pinyin to record words and phrases you learn in this course.
Initials or consonants and finals or vowels are the fundamental elements in Pinyin. Nearly each Chinese syllable can be spelled with exactly one initial followed by one final. Even though most initial contains a consonant, finals are not simple vowels, especially in compound finals. Of all the letters of English alphabet, 25 letters are used for Pinyin. Letter 'v' is not used, while letter 'ü' is added to represent the vowel sound 'yu'.
b p m f d t n l
g k h j q x
zh ch sh r z c s
y w
a o e i u ü
ai ei ui ao ou iu
ie ue er
an en in un ün
ang eng ing ong
zhi chi shi ri zi ci si
yi wu yu
ye yue yin
yun yuan ying
Let’s listen the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Song
Chinese dialects differ in the use of tones. A tone is the pitch used in saying a particular word. Mandarin Chinese has four tones—high-level (flat and high), rising, falling and rising, and falling. The use of tone is an important means of separating words of different meanings but similar pronunciation.
ma1 or mā
ma2 or má
Ma3 or mǎ
ma4 or mà
mother
hemp
horse
scold
ā á ǎ à
ō ó ǒ ò
ē é ě è
ī í ǐ ì
ū ú ǔ ù
ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ
āo áo ǎo ào
A typical Chinese syllable is composed of three parts: an initial, a final and a tone. Not all the syllables have an initial, but every syllable must have a final and tone.
New Words and Phrases:
nǐ 你 you
Hǎo 好 good, fine, well
ma 吗 use to ask a question
hěn 很 very
hěn hǎo 很好 very well
yě 也 also
wǒ 我 I
ne 呢 a particle used for asking a question
xiè 谢 thank
zài 再 again
jiàn 见 see you
jiào 叫 name/call
shì 是 to be (am/is/are)
Practice consonants, vowels and tones we learned today by watching those video clips at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwyQK62tO_U and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9Ayvjy-Dgs . Practice Pinyin Phonetic Alphabet Song.
Practice new words and greeting phrases. Watch this lesson on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNoOdNvdZlg&NR=1
Learn to write them down in Pinyin using Microsoft Word.
Try to use this Pinyin Tone Tool at
http://toshuo.com/chinese-tools/pinyin-tone-tool/