Pronunciation - The Initials

How do we know how to pronounce a particular Chinese character?

The easiest way to learn pronunciation in Chinese is to learn the “pinyin”. Pinyin （拼音）which means “spell the sound”, is a system that uses roman alphabets to spell the pronunciation of Chinese characters.

In English, if given an unfamiliar word, you can predict the pronunciation of the word by looking at the combination of consonants and vowels.

In Chinese, if you never learn the word, you can’t predict the pronunciation of the word by simply looking at the character. For example, how to pronounce “二”?

For us to know how to pronounce any Chinese character without hearing the audio, “pinyin” is created. It works almost like English spelling but there are some differences.

To start learning pinyin, you need to know how to pronounce all its consonants and vowels.

In English there are 21 consonants and 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u).

In Chinese, there are 21 consonants which are referred to as “initials”.

The Chinese initials are:

b   : s-p-a, s-p-eak

ch : ch-arge

c   : like ch without “h” sound

d   : ba-d

f    : f-an, f-ull

g   : di-g

h   : h-en, h-i

j    : j-ig

k   : k-ing

l    : l-ess, l-and

m  : m-eet, m-ud

n   : n-il, n-ose

p  : p-aul, p-ost

q  : cee-se (chee-se without h)

r   : r-ed, r-ose

s   : s-ad, s-ick

sh : sh-ut, sh-ow

t   : th-us, t-each

w : w-on, w-ent

x  : c-ent

y  : y-ou, y-es

zh : j-ob, ch-alk

z   : like zh without “h” sound

The examples of pronunciation given above will not be 100% accurate, as both English & Chinese are different languages anyway. However, those initials marked with red colour have almost similar pronunciation compared to their English letters. To be exact, please refer to audio or ask a Chinese-speaking friend to help.

From the list, you may notice that there are 23 consonants, rather than 21 mentioned earlier. Traditionally, "w" & "y" are not included as consonants in pinyin. However, I think it is easier to include them and learn their sounds. Also note that there is no “v” used in pinyin.

Now I guess the beginners should be able to predict how is "pin yin" being pronounced, if you know how to say "Jeremy Lin".