Pronunciation of pinyin consonants
Posted by admin in fundamentals, tags: consonants, initials, Pinyin, pronunciationWhen traveling to mainland China its easy to get confused by the system of writing Chinese words it Latin letters (the ABCs), called Hanyu Pinyin. This is because there are a few letters which are pronounced differently than they way we would naturally pronounce them in English. Interestingly, until now Taiwan has used two other methods of romanization called Wade-Giles Pinyin and Tongyoung Pinyin which don't use confusing letters and make it easier for non-native Chinese speakers to pronounce the words.
In the following video you will learn how to pronounce the consonants in mainland Chinese Hanyu Pinyin. I studied Chinese using this system and have always found it to be very practical. Once you master it you will even be able to write e-mails and instant messages to your Chinese friends!
The pronunciation of the following letters is the same as in English: B, P, M, F, D, T, N, L, G, K, H, CH, SH, W and Y.
Here are the more difficult letters are as follows and I go over them in the following video. This is my own way of explaining the pronunciations and I welcome readers comments on this subject.
J = D + French "Je"
Q = Ch, but not such a strong Ch
X = Combination of S and Sh
Zh = Slight D + French "Je"
R = like French "Je" and curl your tongue back.
Z = D + Z
C = T + S
Now we're ready to watch the video and go for it!
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