Pinyin 拼音 (pīn yīn), is the romanized translation of Chinese characters. Pinyin was introduced after a language reform during the 1950s, instigated by Zhou Enlai 周恩来 (zhōu ēn lái). He believed that a phonetic system was necessary inorder for people to learn how to pronounce Chinese characters. Zhou Enlai worked alongside linguist, Zhou Youguang 周有光 (zhōu yǒu guāng) to create Hanyu Pinyin 汉语拼音 (hàn yǔ pīn yīn). Hanyu (another way to say ‘Chineselanguage’) Pinyin used the Latin alphabet, which Zhou Youguang believed would help connect China to the western world.
Even though Pinyin is ‘based’ on the Latin alphabet, it still needs to be learned. Many people want to skip Pinyin and go straight to Chinese characters, but there are several reasons why learning Pinyin is essential to learning Chinese properly:
The pronunciation of some Pinyin is not the same as the pronunciation of the Latin letter.
There are sounds that do not exist in the English language.
Pinyin also shows the tone of a Chinese character.
Pinyin acts as a base for learning Chinese characters. Once you’ve learnedPinyin, you can get going with characters!
As I mentioned in the introduction, even though pinyin uses the Latin alphabet, the pronunciation is not the same as its romanized counterpart, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn Chinese without listening to it and speaking it. For that use https://dictionary.writtenchinese.com/ !!
And there are 5 ‘tones’ in Mandarin Chinese. A tone 声调 (shēng diào) refers to the way a character should be spoken. Tones can often be one of the difficult parts of learning Chinese, but the most important reason why you need to learn tones, is because pinyin + tone = a word. So, if either the Pinyin or tone changes, it creates a new word. Don’t panic! It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Remember that Pinyin is just the basis of your Chinese learning. Once you’ve grasped these concepts, you can begin to introduce Chinese characters and much of what you’ve learned won’t be so intimidating!
Using the Pinyin ‘ma’, the 5 tones are as follows: mā má mǎ mà ma
mā/ma1 – if a vowel has a flat line above it, the pinyin is spoken with a flat high tone. This is know as the first tone.
má/ma2 – if a vowel has a upward line above it, then the pinyin is spoken with arising tone. This is known as the second tone.
mǎ/ma3 – if a vowel has a ‘v’ shape above it, then the pinyin is spoken with a dipped tone and this is known as the third tone.
mà/ma4 – if a vowel has a downward line above it, then the pinyin is spoken with a down tone and this is known as the fourth tone.
ma/ma5 – if the pinyin has no line, then the pinyin has no tone. This is known as the fifth tone.Technically, a fifth tone pinyin does have a tone, but it is dependent on the character that comes before it. As a beginner, this is something to be aware of,but not something to panic about!
So, now that you’ve learned the importance of Pinyin, you can make a start on using the Pinyin Chart, to perfect your Chinese pronunciation from the very beginning of your Chinese adventure!