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Written by Apple
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Tuesday, 06 May 2008 |
About Chinese learning (1)
—— Master Chinese Pronunciation Pinyin as the first step
If you are a total beginner who wants to learn Mandarin and do not know where to start then I strongly suggest you to start from pinyin. Learning pinyin helps you in mastering the standard pronunciation of Chinese thus it is the starting point for most beginners. Anyone who can master English pronunciation, especially those English speakers, can easily master Chinese pinyin. Why? Now I can explain it to you. Pinyin uses the 26 English letters to form a phonetic alphabet. Although many of those sounds do not correspond to their equivalents in English, they still have many similarities in pronunciation. Now let’s look at some examples.
E.g. 1
Initial：b, Pronunciation Explanation: Labials (Lip sound): unaspirated stop. Close tightly your lips with air in your mouth; then the breath break through your lips and make resonance inside the oral cavity. It is roughly same as English pronunciation; examples are: boil, boy, book
E.g. 2
Final：ei, Pronunciation Explanation: Half-close your mouth and pronounce "e" first, then move your tongue to the position of pronouncing "i". It is almost the same pronunciation as English letter “A”.
Suggestions: When you learn Pinyin, you’d better compare the pronunciations between English and Chinese, especially with the help of the International Phonetic Symbols. As long as you can grasp the difference and similarity of both languages, you can master Pinyin very quickly. But since there are four "tones" in Mandarin, you need to practise similar pronunciation with different tones as much as you can, this way you can improve the accuracy of pronouncing Chinese.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 27 May 2008 )
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