Lesson 7: Pinyin

好久不见！你好吗？(hao3 jiu3 bu2 jian4!  ni3 hao3 ma5?)  Are you ready for another lesson?  Great!

Pinyin is the system of writing Chinese in letters that westerners can pronounce, also know as romanization.  It tells you how to pronounce a character.  For instance, the Pinyin for 你好 is ni3 hao3.

Typically the tone for the syllable will be written over the vowel that it impacts (when there is more than one vowel like in "hao").  However, I am not able to do that on this blog, so I will indicate tones at the end of the syllable by the number that follows it.

For the most part, the letters you see are pronounced that way, but once in a while you have exceptions.

Whenever you see a "c" in Pinyin, it is pronounced like a hard "ts" sound.  So "菜 cai4" would be pronounced "tsai4" and NOT "kai4."

A "z" in Pinyin is pronounced like a "dz" in English.  So the "zai4" in 再见 is literally pronounced "dzai."

The sounds for "q" and "ch" are just like the "ch" in the English word "chew," but the vowels are pronounced differently for each.  For example, "qi" is pronounced "chee" like "cheese," but "chi" is pronounced "chir," like "fir tree."

There are two "u" sounds in Chinese: one is like in the word "sue" and the other is like the French "u" sound and is depicted by a ü in Chinese.  So if you see "u" pronounce it like "oo" and if you see "ü" pronounce it like the French "u".  There is however, one exception to this: if a "u" follows a "y" or a "q" in Chinese, it will be pronounced like a French "u".

There are other such exceptions, but for the most part, it is straightforward.  If you have any trouble pronouncing a word, look up the pronunciation on Google Translate or you can leave a comment below and I will do my best to explain.

Good luck! 再见！