- Mandarin Chinese Pronunciation

Arch Chinese offers Mandarin Chinese Pinyin Table and Mandarin Chinese Pinyin Converter to help you study and practice Mandarin Chinese pronunciation.

Unlike English, Chinese is not a phonetic language. The pronunciation is not related to the writing of Chinese characters. Pinyin, the romanization system for Mandarin Chinese, is used to teach Chinese school children and foreign learners the standard pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese.

The fundamental elements in Pinyin are initials and finals, which represent the segmental phonemic portion of the language. Initials are initial consonants, while finals are the combinations of medials (semivowels coming before the vowel), the nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant).

Chinese is a tonal language. There are 4 tones in Mandarin Chinese (Click the tone examples to hear the tone differences):

1. The first tone:   flat tone, marked by a macron on top of the Pinyin vowal, such as ā in mā (媽, mother)
2. The second tone:   rising tone, marked by an acute accent on top of the Pinyin vowal, such as á in má (麻, numb)
3. The third tone:   falling-rising tone, marked by a caron (or rounded breve) on top of the Pinyin vowal, such as ă in mă (馬, horse)
4. The fourth tone:   falling tone, marked by a grave accent on top of the Pinyin vowal, such as à in mà (罵, to scold)

The tone marks are important for correct pronunciation of Mandarin syllables. A common convention is to use a tone number at the end of individual syllables to mark their tones.

An umlaut is placed over the letter u when it occurs after the initials l and n in order to represent the sound yü. Tonal markers are added on top of the umlaut, as in lǜ and nǚ. v is commonly used instead by convention.

To help you study Mandarin Chinese pronunciation, the Mandarin Chinese Pinyin Table provides the complete listing of all Pinyin syllables used in standard Mandarin. An empty cell on the table indicates that the corresponding syllable does not exist in standard Mandarin. The tone variations of the syllable will display on the top of the table after you click on a syllable. Click on the tone variations of a syllable to practice the pronunciation. Not all 4 tones exist for each syllable. The system displays only the tone variations that exist in standard Mandarin.

Another userful Pinyin tool is the Mandarin Chinese Pinyin Converter, which allows you to convert Pinyin with tone number notation to Pinyin with tone marks.