Introduction to Hanyu Pinyin - Part 1

Hanyu Pinyin is the romanization system of Chinese characters, or known as the Chinese Phonics. As I have mentioned before, the pronunciation is closer to our Bahasa Indonesia pronunciation than English. We read "mang", "shang", "lang", "ai", "mei", "fa" just like how we read it in Bahasa Indonesia, the only thing that will differentiate them with Bahasa Indonesia is the intonation. As for your reference, why I said it is different from English, because letter "a" in Chinese is read as "a" as in word "aku" or "father". We do not read the letter "a" as "ei" as how we spell in English alphabets and how it sounds in the word "say".

Another example, "lang" in Chinese doesn't sound like the first syllable of "language", instead, we read it as in the Bahasa Indonesia word "langsung"

There are 6 single vowels in Chinese. They are a, o, e, i, u, ü. Please try to memorize them in this order, because it will help in the future. Again, the order is:

a, o, e, i, u, ü.

Here is how they are pronounced

If you notice the only difference with English and Bahasa Indonesia is that in Chinese there is an additional vowel that is written as u with 2 dots on top. on your phone, you can use the letter "v" to represent this letter ü.

The next part is sheng mu 声母 or we can call them as the consonant in Mandarin.

Here is the list of sheng mu

b    p     m   f

d    t      n    l

g    k     h   

j     q     x

zh  ch   sh  r

z     c    s

y    w

I will want you to familiarize yourselves with the above pinyin for now. Try your very best to memorize it in the order given. Here is the compilation of the mentioned Chinese phonics / pinyin we learn above:

Once you are okay with it, read the following:

a o e i u ü b p m f d t n l g k h j q x zh ch sh r z c s y w

The sound of zh and z are almost the same. The difference is the shape of the mouth and position of your tongue.

For zh ch sh r, you have to fold your tongue and shape your mouth as when you pronounce the first syllable of "SH-ape"

For z c s, you have to keep your tongue flat down and shape your mouth as when you pronounce "cheese"

Once you know how each of the alphabet is pronounced in Chinese, then try to pronounce the following. (they are random!)

j, g , m , i ,  c ,  f

zh , b , s , y , k ,  p 

t, l, x, d, q , o

z, sh, r, u, w

ch, a, e  , n , h

See if you get them right. Here is the answer:

Cross check your answer...

Only when you can identify each of the alphabet with the correct sound when they appear randomly, then you can start "spelling" word.

There are actually other pinyins that we have to get ourselves familiar with (such as the double vowels, ei, ai, ou... etc), however, the above are the basic. Let's take it step by step. With this alone, you can already read quite a bunch of words. Next post we will try to apply this to words with simple pinyin such as: ma, ta, le, ke, he, cha, she, pa, ne, me, sha, etc.

There are a few rules that you have to know (such as "ri" is read as "re" in "resah", etc), but not now...

For now, familiarize yourselves with the above.

Happy Spelling,

Linda Tan

P.S. There is high chances that the video above is not supported in ios. It definitely doesn't work on my iPhone (not sure about android), however, it works fine on my laptop. So if you can't play the video (that shows you how to pronounce the phonics), then please check this video on Youtube. Click here

If you want to master the above first and take it step by step, then you can stop the video when it reaches the minute of 1:50. However, if you would like to explore more yourselves, then feel free to watch the whole video.