Tuesday, August 4, 2009

What Is "Pinyin"?

August 04, 2009
What is "pinyin"?

From Wikipedia:
Pinyin, or more formally Hanyu Pinyin, is currently the most commonly used Romanization system for Standard Mandarin. Hanyu means the Chinese language, and pinyin means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or "spelled sound". It is used to teach standard pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese to schoolchildren in China as well as to foreign learners.

Initials and finals are the fundamental elements in pinyin. Nearly each Chinese syllable can be spelled with exactly one initial followed by one final. Click Here for a pinyin table which is a complete listing of all Hanyu Pinyinsyllables used in Standard Mandarin.

There are 4 basic tones in Hanyu: 





Click Here and Here for another pinyin chart including audio & videos that you can hear the pronunciation with 4 tones.

Another video for you: 聲母 韻母 歌 (声母 韵母 歌, Shengmu Yunmu Ge, Initial Final Song ) The lyrics in the video is traditional Chinese.
 
Lyrics:  

聲母 韻母 歌 (声母 韵母 歌, Shēngmǔ Yùn , Initial Final Song )  
b p m f d t n l  
g k h j q x  
zh ch sh r z c s 
i u ü a o e ê  
ai ei ao ou  
an en ang eng ong

我們 來 唱 聲母 韻母 歌 
我们 来 唱 声母 韵母 歌 
Wǒmen lái chàng Shēngmǔ Yùn 
Let's sing Initial Final Song

PS. There's even music only section for you to solo!


Practice writing: CLICK HERE and hit the brushes next to each character to see the stroke orders. Grab a piece of paper and write them down.








I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a reply/comment below this post. I will reply asap.




9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jeannie, this is a great blog. I really enjoy the teaching tools that you use. You help to make learning Chinese not only easy but also fun. I look forward to learning more from you. Keep up the hard work. WeiLi

Gin said...

Thank you so much, WeiLi! I'm sure I'll keep doing my best!- Jeannie

Dave Nettles said...

Great site, I see you are off to a great start. Keep up the good work.

cyrano said...

I think the cat is very poor because the way of the girl treated her/him... but making laugh too :)) not sure how long it took you to find such a video. I find the pinyin system is quite complicated for me... like other said, keep up the good work :)

My Home Kitchen said...

Dear MeiChun Jones (Jeannie

Thanks for joining as followers to my blog -
http://grammar-idioms-phrases.blogspot.com/

Gin said...

Thanks, Dave!

You are welcome, Teacher.

Cyrano, That cat video wasn't difficult to find. Pinyin system is just like Zhuyin system but in different form. Like b=ㄅ, p=ㄆ, m=ㄇ, f=ㄈ...You can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin scroll down look at Bopomofo vs. Pinyin.
(Bopomofo means Zhuyin)

Learn Chinese In China said...

I m very big fan of chinese show shinchan. In that show i found the chinese written so many times. But i could not get it. I want to learn some easily,.

gambar payudara said...

I really enjoy the teaching tools that you use. You help to make learning Chinese not only easy but also fun. I look forward to learning more from you.

Gin said...

Thanks for all your comments. Please like, share & register.
I appreciate it!