Tips for Chinese Pronunciation

Tips for Chinese Pronunciation is a video production presented by Tracey together with New Concept Mandarin. Tracey has been learning Chinese with New Concept Mandarin while producing this video. As a sound specialist she is particularly interested in Chinese Sounds and she is willing to share some very helpful tips and tricks on how English speakers can quickly master Chinese pronunciation. We believe a learner’s perspective to Chinese sounds can be more fun and effective for you.

Chinese Pronunciation

Chinese is not a phonetic language. The pronunciation is not related to the writing of Chinese words (characters). A special tool called Pinyin (pronouncing the sound) is created for people to learn Mandarin pronunciation. Pinyin is a way to transcribe Chinese characters so people can pronounce it. The writing of Pinyin is similar to English alphabet.

If you listen carefully you will find Chinese is a very beautiful language as it has more musical sounds (vowels) than noise (consonants). Except for nasal sound like “n” and “m”, all Chinese syllables ends with vowels. So we call them “Final Sounds”. The consonants at the beginning of a syllable are called “Initial Sounds”.

Most of Mandarin sounds are easy for English speaker to pronounce but some sounds are more challenging and require more practice. Watch the “Tips for Chinese Pronunciation” video shared by Tracey (our Mandarin student) and practice the “Chinese Sound Drills” by following Vivian (our Mandarin teacher), you will master Chinese pronunciation in no time.

Chinese Tones

Mandarin Pronunciation Table

All Mandarin sounds (syllables) are listed in this pronunciation table. Click from A to Z to find all syllables and listen to the pronunciation.

普通话教程 - 拼音听读练习