Pronunciation

Pronouncing mandarin words is a quite tricky work. Why is that so? Firstly, as a non-native speaker of mandarin, in order to simplify the way we produce the sound and how the Chinese characters are pronounced, we need to know the Pinyin. Pinyin is the latin alphabetic system which serve as the transcription of the Hanzi (the Chinese characters) sounds.

For instance, the pinyin 'baba' is not pronounced as how the /b/ sounds in English. Instead, it is much closer to the sound /p/ in English, so the correct way to pronounce it is 'papa'.

Hence, the first thing to do is to familiarize yourself with the Pinyin sound to practically be able to pronounce words or any mandarin utterances correctly.

Take a look at the chart below and click on each of the consonant or vowel to know how it sounds.

Source: https://chinese.yabla.com/

Have yourself a little practice to pronounce these words.

Listen whether you have produce the sounds as well as the tone correctly.