a
Open your mouth wide, with your tongue in the middle in a low position; the lips are naturally opened. o Half-close your mouth with the tongue in a half-high position; draw back your tongue and make your lips round-shaped. e o
After pronouncing "o", naturally open up your mouth and keep the tongue's position unchanged. i When pronoucing "i", the tongue is in the highest position, the mouth is slightly opened and the lips are flat-shaped. Stretch forward your tongue, put it against the back of the lower teeth and open up your lips. u When pronoucing "u", the tongue is in the highest position and the mouth is slightly opened. Make your lips round shaped, draw back your tongue and make the tongue root approach the soft palate. ü i
After pronoucing "i", just make your lips round shaped to pronounce "ü", with the tongue position unchanged. b Close tightly your lips with air in your mouth; then the breath break through your lips and make resonance inside the oral cavity. p b
The pronunciation method is more or less the same with "b", with stronger breath going out. m Close your lips tightly and open the nasal path by hanging down the soft palate. Make your vocal cords vibrate and the breath go out from your nose. f Use the upper teeth touch the lower lip slightly and the breath will be squeezed out from the seam between the teeth and the lip. d Put the tip of your tongue against the upper gum, pronounce with weaker breath breaking through the obstruction. t d
The pronunciation method is more or less the same with "d", with stronger breath going out.
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Learn Chinese Pinyin-Vowels
Chinese Pinyin is a Roman-letter based system that China now uses to mark the pronunciation of
Chinese characters. That is to say,
Chinese Pinyin is a way to represent Chinese characters and express the sounds in Chinese language using the alphabet. There are other systems to express
Mandarin, but Chinese Pinyin is the most accepted and widely used. Once you learn Chinese Pinyin you will know how to pronounce any word in Mandarin using a Chinese dictionary.
Chinese Pinyin is also the most common way to input Chinese characters into computers. With four tones and Chinese Pinyin, any Chinese characters can be pronounced precisely. In many cases,
Chinese Pinyin is quite intuitive to English speakers with only a few exceptions. However, it can be a twist to render Chinese Pinyin in four tones for people who just start. There are lots of Chinese Pinyin resources online. Chinese Pinyin consists of initial consonants (b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, ɡ, k, h, j, q, x, z, c, s, r, zh, ch, sh) and finals or compound vowels (ɑ, o, e, i, u). Each Chinese character is one syllable constructed by a compound vowel and one initial consonant, the latter of which will be discussed in consonant.
Vowel Table: a , o ,e , i , u ,ϋ , ai , ei , ui , ao, ou, iu, ie , ue , er , an , en, in , un , ϋn , ang , eng, ing , ong As you can see, most vowels are simply a combination of the 6 major vowels in the first row, which is obviously the most important part, and some special consonants.How can you remember all this? We are putting all these into English words with virtually the same sound for you to learn and remember in an easier way.
*Note: letters in the following explanation in "..." are pronounced as in English, and those in '... ' are pronounced in Pinyin. Also, all samples are delivered in 4 tones. a - as the vowel in "star" without the "r" sound o - as the vowel in "law" e - as the vowel in "stir" i - as the vowel in "bit" u - as the vowel in "food" ϋ - as "y" in "yellow" followed by the 'u' above ai - as the vowel in "bike" ei - as the vowel in "lake" ui - combination of 'u' and 'i', the same as word "we" in English ao - as the vowel in "loud" ou - as the vowel in "flow" iu - combination of
