成人快手

What is pinyin?

Burt Bessington

Mandarin characters don’t tell you how to pronounce a word.

They are more like pictures that represent an object or an idea.

Pinyin was invented to help those learning Mandarin with pronunciation - pīn yīn literally translates to ‘spell sound’.

For example it is impossible to tell, from looking at it, how the Mandarin character for mountain is pronounced, so we use the pinyin 蝉丑ā苍 to give its sound - .

Burt Bessington

Pinyin with Burt Bessington

How is Pinyin formed?

Pinyin uses all the same letters of the alphabet as English, except for 'v', to form:

  • 23 initials - the beginning of a syllable

  • 36 finals - the end of a syllable

Here are some examples:

MandarinPinyinEnglish
办ā颈open
谤é苍man
蝉丑耻ǐwater
尘ùwood
maa question particle

The marks over the letters indicate which tone is used in the pronunciation, helping to make it clear which word you are saying.

Burt Bessington pointing.

Did you know?

Some words with different characters and different meanings are written exactly the same in pinyin.

For example:

  • shǒu shì - gesture

  • shǒu shì - jewellery

These are called homophones.

Burt Bessington pointing.

Differences between pinyin and English

Pinyin was not created for English speakers, so whilst there are similarities, there are also important differences:

  • some pinyin sounds don’t exist in English

  • some pinyin is pronounced differently than English

You can find out more about these special sounds here.

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