Lesson 1 Pinyin Session 1 学拼音 12.9.2022-18.9.2022
Learning outcomes:
- Get to know the Chinese pronunciation system
- The pronunciation of Chinese consonants and vowels
- The pronunciation of tones
Please go through all the material on this page and submit the homework by the end of week 18.9. 23:59.
What is pinyin
The pronunciation of Chinese characters has been written with Latin letters since 1956, when the so-called Pinyin System was officially invented. The Chinese word Pinyin means “spelling language”. It is used mainly to teach spoken Chinese. In fact, if a foreigner only wants to learn how to speak Chinese, he really doesn’t need to spend time learning Chinese characters at all; the simple Pinyin System is adequate to help him to master spoken Chinese.
Although Pinyin is already a complete “spelling language” for writing Standard Chinese speech, in China it is not regarded as a written language system. Up till now, it has only been used as a tool to learn spoken Chinese and new Chinese characters.
The vowels and consonants of Pinyin
Vowels:
a o e i u ü
Note that e and i are pronounced very different depending on which consonant comes before them.
Consonants:
b p m f d t n l g
k h j q x z c s zh
ch sh r