Learn to Speak Chinese With Pinyin

An Introduction to Hanyu Pinyin Romanization

Sep 12, 2009 Mark Brenndorfer

What is Hanyu Pinyin and how does it work? Learn about Mandarin's most popular romanization system.

Hanyu pinyin is a system used to write out how Chinese words sound. This article details how pinyin works and why it is useful.

The Chinese Writing System

English is an alphabetic language. This means that it uses a set of letters, each of which roughly represents a phoneme. These letters are put together in different combinations to visually "spell out" the way a word sounds.

The writing system of Chinese is logographic (not pictographic as many ancient Chinese characters were). Instead of using letters to spell out how words sound, Chinese uses single characters to represent words. Unfortunately, this means that there is no direct link between how Chinese characters are written and how the words these characters represent are pronounced.

The result of Chinese employing a logographic script is that words cannot be "sounded out" in the same way English words can, since Chinese characters are not create using an alphabet. Thankfully, there are systems of romanization which can be used to learn the pronunciation of Chinese characters. Hanyu pinyin is the most popular of these systems.

What is Hanyu Pinyin and How Does it Work?

Hanyu is one of the many Chinese words used to refer to the Chinese language; Han is the name of the largest ethnic group in China, and yu means "language". Pinyin means "phonetics" and refers to the way sounds are spelled. So, Hanyu pinyin is a system used to write out the sounds of Chinese words.

While alphabetic scripts consist of consonants and vowels, Hanyu pinyin is made up of "initials" and "finals". Initials are sounds at the beginning of a Chinese syllable, and finals are sounds which make up the endings of syllables.

Pinyin uses approximately 21 initials and 39 finals. Some examples of pinyin initials include: p, b, x, zh, and j. Examples of finals include: u, a, iao, ang, and iang. Combining initials and finals creates complete syllables in Mandarin Chinese. For example: pu, ba, xiao, zhang, and jiang.

Some Important Features of Chinese

To understand pinyin, some features of Chinese need to be noted. First, one Chinese character is never longer than one syllable. Second, one syllable in Chinese can correspond to a number of characters. For example, the syllable bao can correspond to around 19 different characters.

Finally, although Hanyu pinyin uses letters that the English alphabet also uses, the pronunciation of these letters often differs. For example, while the pronunciation of b, p, k, and m in both pinyin and English spellings are essentially identical, the pronunciation of other letters such as x, c, and z are very different.

Representing the Tones of Mandarin Chinese

Chinese is famous for being a tonal language. That is, the pitch and contour used in the pronunciation of syllables influences a word's meaning. Mandarin has four tones and one neutral tone. To illustrate this, consider the syllable ba. Using these different tones to pronounce the syllable ba can change its meaning:

ba with a first tone can mean "eight"
ba with a second tone can mean "sacrifice"
ba with a third tone can mean "hold"
ba with a fourth tone can mean "father"
ba with a neutral tone can be used to indicate polite suggestion

Tones are represented in Chinese using four different diacritic marks. Diacritics are used in the orthographies of many languages, such as French, Greek, and Hebrew. These are small marks placed above, below, or between letters, and are often used to change a letter's sound value.

Using Hanyu pinyin, the four tones are represented with diacritics placed above one letter in each syllable. These are: a straight line, a rising line, a dipping line (much like a shallow "u" shape), and a falling line. A neutral tone is indicated by omitting a diacritic mark.

Uses of Hanyu Pinyin

The original use of pinyin was to teach the pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese to citizens of China who spoke a non-Mandarin dialect as their first language. It was designed by the Chinese government to promote literacy and encourage the use of Standard Mandarin in a nation of numerous and diverse dialects.

Over the years, pinyin has come to virtually replace all other romanization systems of Chinese, such as the Wade-Giles system.

Today, learners of Chinese as a second language across the globe use the pinyin system to learn the pronunciation of Chinese.

Since Hanyu pinyin uses letters that are also used in the English alphabet, regular computer keyboards can be used to enter Chinese text into computers.

Quick Facts and Further Study

Chinese uses a logographic script, so pronunciation is not obviously indicated in its writing system. Pinyin is the most popular romanization system of Chinese. It uses common English alphabet letters to create syllables which correspond to different characters. It is useful in the teaching of Chinese pronunciation to people learning Mandarin as a second language or second dialect, and to children studying Mandarin in Chinese primary schools.

For people interested in learning more about pinyin and how to pronounce Chinese words, beginner Chinese language textbooks with audio CDs are a great starting point.

The copyright of the article Learn to Speak Chinese With Pinyin in Language Study is owned by Mark Brenndorfer. Permission to republish Learn to Speak Chinese With Pinyin in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.