Exploring Pronunciation

If you’re anything like me, you probably want to sound like a native Chinese speaker as soon as you can. With enough practice, you will get there, but for now, don’t worry about pronouncing everything perfect from your first try. Here is the basic information you need about Chinese pronunciation to get get started on this journey to fluency.

The first thing to know is that the smallest unit of meaning in the language, known as a morpheme, is represented by a single syllable. Some words are made up of just a single syllable while others contain multiple syllables. Each syllable comprises of an initial sound, a final sound, and a tone.

What is pinyin?

As you might imagine there isn’t an easy way to study the initials and finals by looking at Chinese characters. So, Pinyin was developed to represent the pronunciation of Chinese characters using the Roman alphabet and diacritic marks (for the tones).

Let’s look at an example: The syllable “mā” (妈) is made up of an initial sound “m” and a final sound “a”. It is pronounced with the first tone and signifies the meaning “mother”. You’ll learn more about tones in this article, I recommend reading it after this one.

Are finals and vowels the same thing?

When I started learning Chinese, I was told that finals are vowels. Since in English we are used to one vowel being one letter, when I found out that “ao” “eng” “ong” are finals, I was confused. Here are the initials and finals in Chinese, try to separate them mentally from English constants and vowels.

The best way to learn pinyin

A crucial point to bear in mind about pinyin, is that despite using the same letters as European languages, pinyin utilizes those letters to represent Mandarin Chinese sounds. Therefore, some letters may not produce the sounds you anticipate, as they are pronounced differently in Chinese.

The best method to overcome this hurdle is to keenly listen to the pronunciation of new vocabulary repeatedly. Eventually, you will recognize the correct pronunciation for each type of syllable. Trust me, it is better and more interesting to become accustomed to pinyin sounds by listening to actual words rather than spending hours repeating initials and finals. So, I don’t recommend first trying to master all the pinyin sounds individually using a pinyin chart.  For your first encounter with Initials and Finals on this page, I will use morphemes from very common words to help you distinguish how each syllable sounds.

Similarly, do not learn pinyin by writing it repeatedly alongside the characters. The best way is to listen to it keenly as many times as you need to, then practice saying the words and checking how your pronunciation compares to the recording.

Exploring initials and finals

Now that you know what the most efficient way to learn pinyin is, let’s look at the initials and finals in more detail, starting with finals. I decided not to include the characters and definitions for these syllables because I want you to just focus on the listening to the similarity between the examples for each initial and final. You don’t need to try to learn what these morphemes mean for now, because you will learn them very soon in upcoming lessons.

Initials

#	Initials	Examples
1	b	bù, bā, bái
2	p	péng, pà, piào
3	m	míng, miàn, mǐ
4	f	fàn, fēi, fēng
5	d	dà, děng, dào
6	t	tài, tú, tiān
7	n	nǎ, nán, nǐ
8	l	lǎo, liù, líng
9	g	gōng, guì, guó
10	k	kǎo, kàn, kuài
11	h	hòu, huí, hào
12	j	jiàn, jīn, jiào
13	q	qiú, qù, qǐng
14	x	xué, xīn, xiǎo
15	z	zài, zǎo, zuǒ
16	c	cài, cǎo, céng
17	s	sān, shǎo, sì
18	zh	zhàn, zhōng, zhù
19	ch	chē, chá, chàng
20	sh	shàng, shū, shēng
21	r	rén, ròu, rú

Finals

#	Finals	Examples	Variation Examples
1	a	mā, bà, dǎ
2	ai	ài, hái, mǎi
3	ao	hǎo, bāo, yào
4	an	fàn, kàn, nán
5	ang	shàng, tāng, ràng
6	o	pò, wǒ, bó
7	ou	dōu, zhōu, ròu
8	ong	tóng, gōng, zhōng
9	e	è, hē, hé	yě, yè
10	ei	nèi, běi, méi
11	en	sēn, rén, bèn
12	eng	shēng, lěng, péng
13	er	ér, èr, ěr
14	i (y)	yī, xī, jī	zhī, chí, shì
15	ia	xià, jiā, qiā
16	iao	xiǎo, liǎo, jiào
17	ian	tiān, qián, diàn
18	iang	liǎng, jiǎng, xiǎng	yàng, yáng
19	ie	xiě, jiě, liè
20	iou (iu)	yǒu, liù, jiǔ

#	Finals	Examples	Variation Examples
21	in	lín, bīn, jìn
22	ing	míng, líng, tīng
23	iong	xiōng, qióng, xióng
24	u	bù, dú, shū
25	ua	shuǎ, guā, huà
26	uai	kuài, shuài, guài
27	uan	tuán, wán, ruǎn
28	uang	shuāng, wǎng, guāng
29	uo	guó, zuò, zhuó
30	ui (uei)	tuī, huì, guǐ
31	un	gǔn, tūn, hùn
32	ü (yu)	lǜ, nǚ, yú
33	ue (yue)	xué, yuè, lüè
34	ün (yun)	yún, jūn, jùn
35	üan (yuan)	yuǎn, yuán, yuàn

Explanations of variations
• when ‘e’ is preceded by y/yu, it is like e in ‘yes’
• when ‘i’ follows initials z, c, s, zh, ch, sh and r, it is pronounced very differently