Free Chinese lesson 1: Pinyin alphabets – finals [a,o,e,i,u,ü]

Chinese language is becoming more popular as China is stronger than before. No matter you’re going to China for studying or working, Chinese language is a must requirement. The huge market potential means opportunity to earn the money. So understanding Chinese language will help you a lot to negotiate with Chinese manufacturers or suppliers. In this post you will learn Pinyin alphabets, I will show you how to pronounce Chinese Pinyin alphabets with audio for free.

I searched the Google and YouTube, there’re ton of tutorials on learning Chinese language. However, the most popular one might not be the right one for you. Because the order to learn Chinese (Mandarin) language is not clear for most of beginners.

How do I start learning Chinese?

This is the most frequently asked questions for Chinese learning beginners. They just pick up some popular videos or tutorials and diving into there. After few months learning, they still can’t pronounce Chinese correctly or have many confused questions without fixing.

I highly recommend all beginners start with Pinyin. You need to learn pronouncing Chinese alphabets first. The Chinese alphabets are totally different from English alphabets. I mean the pronunciation are totally different, but the writing of Chinese alphabets are totally the same.

What you need to learn Chinese alphabets is learning it’s pronunciation. And that’s what we called Hanyu Pinyin(拼音).

What is Pinyin(拼音)?

Pinyin is a tool for helping you to pronounce Chinese characters correctly. The function of Pinyin is similar to international phonetic alphabet (IPA) when you’re learning English. It only helps to speak Chinese. But you should know that Pinyin can never be the substitute of Chinese characters. And you can only see Pinyin on textbook for beginners.

In other words, Pinyin is the basic of Chinese, and the very important part of learning Chinese. You just don’t want to miss this helpful lesson.

What does Pinyin looks like? Actually, each sinlge alphabet in Pinyin are all the same as A-Z except this one ( ü ), however, the pronunciation are so much different. That’s why it makes you confusing easily.

Generally speaking,  a single Chinese character is equal to  a syllable. The structure of a Chinese syllable is quite simple, usually being composed of an initial and a final with a tone. tone marks are placed on the major vowels of the final. And the tone marks are always placed on the top of the final.

Basically, A standard of Pinyin is initial+final with a tone. Tone mark place on the top of final.

Let me make examples for you

[ n ] is initial and [ i ] is final, adding a third tone mark( falling and rising). Which can indicate ‘you’ in English. But there’re many Chinese characters have the same Pinyin and pronunciation. I will show you later. You just need to learn some most used and basic one.

[ h ] is initial and [ ao ] is final, adding a third tone, it can indicate”good” in English.

[ f ] is initial and [ eng ] is final, adding a first tone ( flat tone ), it can indicate”wind” in English.

From the tables I shown you. You might found that why call it initial and final, that’s because the initial part in the beginning and the final part called final.

Now you know why I highly recommend you start to learn Chinese from Pinyin. As long as, you can pronounce each alphabets, then it will be extremely easy to pronounce thousands of Chinese characters. That’s how we Chinese students learnt in the first grade of primary school.

How many does Chinese Pinyin alphabets have?

Basically, Pinyin alphabets you need to learlearn is what we called initials and finals. Pinyin has 23 initials and 24 finails.

If you’re beginners to learn Chinese, then I don’t recommend you to memorize them all at once. That would be boring and makes you feeling depressed.

Do you remember what I highlighted before? The order to learn Chinese! In this lesson I will teach you Pinyin finals [ a, o, e, i, u, ü ] and Pinyin initials [ b, p, m, f ] and adding tone. After practicing you will find that you’re not a total beginner anymore.

How to pronounce Chinese Pinyin finals vowels [ a, o, e, i, u, ü ]

Pinyin final [ a ]: Wide-open mouth, imaging that there’s a doctor are checking your throat, you need to wide-open your mouth that’s the mouth shape you should know. And the pronunciation of [ a ] is like [ a ] of “father”

Pinyin final [ o ]: Round your mouth, your mouth shape is exactly the same as “o”. From the picture above, rooster is crowding, the sound is kind like Pinyin final [ o ]. And the pronunciation of [ o ] is like [ o ] of “boy”.

Pinyin final [ e ]: This sound is like [ ə ] in IPA, but it’s longer and slighter than [ ə ]. And the pronunciation of [ e ] is like [ a ] of “banana”.

From this picture, can you find the [ i ], [ y ], [ w ] ?

Pinyin final [ i ] and Pinyin initial [ y ] have exactly the same pronunciation.

To pronounce [ i ] and [ y ] sound, your mouth shape is like a smile shaped. The pronunciation of [ i ] and [ y ] is like [ e ] of “eleven”.

Besides, [ i ] and [ y ] have the same pronunciation, and also same as [ yī ], it means “clothe 衣” or ” one 一 ”

Now, let’s look the picture above again. Did you find the [ w ] on the roof of the house? Actually this is Pinyin initial [ w ]. Actually, [ y ] and [ w ] is in the behind of [ a-z] list. Why would I teach you right now. That’s because they have exactly the same as some finals. So the initial [ w ] souund and final [ u ] has the same sound.

The mouth shape is like “o” sound, but smaller. And the initial [ w ] sound and final [ u ] sounds like [ u ] of “put”. But longer and slighter.

Now let’s look at final [ ü ]. This alphabet is quite often to see in German language.

Keeping your mount is smaller than [ u ] sound. It’s like you’re going to blow a whistle. Don’t forget to add “two dots” when you write this alphabet.

Note: The pronounciation of each single initial or final from the tables above all are the first tone. You need to practice them with all four tones. Like the below audios.

What’s Chinese tone?

Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, which means that different tones can change the meaning of a word, even if the pronunciation and spelling are otherwise the same. It is essential to learn the different tones if you wish to speak Mandarin Chinese correctly. Mandarin Chinese has four main tones, actually there are five tones.

First Tone( 1st ): Flat and steady. Symbol is “ — “

Second Tone ( 2cd ): Rising tone. Symbol is “ ／ ”

Third Tone ( 3rd ): Falling and Rising. Symbol is “ ﹀ ”

Fourth Tone ( 4th ): Falling and Stressed. Symbol is “ ＼ ”

Tone is the key to speek Mandarin Chinese correctly. If you can’t pronouce tone properly, then people won’t get what you want to express. From what I saw, most foreigners are struggling with Chinese tone. But don’t worry about that, you just need to practice with a good way.

Note: All tone marks are placed on the top of finals, you can’t place the tone mark on the finals. Just keep that in mind.

Far more then that, of course they’re just have the same pronunciation and not a standard Pinyin, so in next lesson, I will teach you Pinyin initials. And how to put initial and final together to make a standard Pinyin written way. After that you will learn hundreds of Chinese characters. None of these Chinese characters you can read or recognize, it’s totally ok. I will teach you later, but not now, you just need to pronounce them correctly so far.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please comment bellow. See you in next lessons.