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Speaking Chinese
The Pronunciation Guide
Learning is
a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
Gold has its price; learning is beyond price.
(Chinese Proverb)
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The most important thing to grasp to the key of Speaking Chinese is by learning the
phonetic or Pinyin system.
Over the years,
many different Romanization systems have been devised to represent
Chinese characters phonetically. Romanization is a method of using
letters of the Roman alphabet to recreate the sounds of a language, in
our case, to pronounce Chinese characters.
The most commonly
used Romanization system for speaking Chinese are Pinyin, Wade-Giles and Yale.
- Yale: Created by Yale
University in 1948 for US military language-teaching
- Wade-Giles: First
published in 1859 by Thomas Francis Wade, a British diplomat who served
in China, later modified by Cambridge professor Herbert Allen Giles in
1912. Used to be used as an exclusive system in English-speaking
countries.
- Hanyu Pinyin: Published
in 1958 and became International Standard Organization (ISO) standard
in 1982.
In speaking Chinese, Pinyin has
increased its popularity and widely accepted by domestic and
international Chinese education, we will introduce Pinyin in great
detail.
A few observations
and advices about learning Chinese pronunciation:
Know the Pinyin
system, remember each vowel / consonant, master the sound by heart.
Spend enough time on practicing until you can memorize and pronounce
each sound properly. Trust me, that will save you a great deal of time
in the long run.
Understand speaking Chinese
tones, know the four tones (or five if you count the "toneless" one)
and be able to tell the differences. This will help you avoid
unnecessary confusion or mistakes.
When learning from
a native Chinese speaker, I recommend you find somebody from Northern
part of China (Beijing the best) who speaks standard Chinese -
Mandarin. Certain dialects
don't curl or flat tongue properly, that will only lead you to the
wrong direction.
Many people are
searching for "Chinese Alphabet", are there really such a thing called Chinese Alphabet at
all? read this article
will help answering your questions.
Check out our
recommended Learn
Speak Chinese Resource Section for videos, tapes or other
online resources.
Ready, set? Let's
go and explorer the following important Chinese pronunciation topics:
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