Chinese phrasebook - Traditional pronunciation guide · Pronunciation guide in Chinese phrasebook - Traditional

Pronunciation guide in Chinese phrasebook - Traditional

The pronunciation guide below uses Hanyu pinyin, the official romanization of the People's Republic of China. Until recently, Taiwan used the Wade-Giles system, which is quite different, then switched to Tongyong pinyin, only slightly different from Hanyu pinyin, and now officially uses Hanyu pinyin just like the People's Republic. Pinyin allows very accurate pronunciation of Chinese if you understand how it works, but the way that it uses letters like q, x, c, z and even i is not at all intuitive to the English speaker. Studying the pronunciation guide below carefully is thus essential. After you master the pronunciation you still may not be understood, its time to move on to the next challenge, speaking the accurate tones. Some pinyin vowels (especially "e", "i", "ü") can be tricky, so it is best to get a native speaker to demonstrate. Also, beware of the spelling rules listed in the exceptions below.

a�

as in father; otherwise, pronounced as in "awesome"

a in an

as "a" in "cat" or "back" (just the English short "a" sound)

e�

unrounded back vowel (IPA [ɤ]), similar to duh; in unstressed syllables becames a schwa (IPA [ə]), like idea

i�

as in see or key;
after sh, zh, s, z or r, not really a vowel at all but just a stretched-out consonant sound

o�

as in saw

u�

as in soon; but read ü in ju, qu, yu and xu

ü�

as in French lune or German grün

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Chinese phrasebook - Traditional Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.

Pronunciation guide in Chinese phrasebook - Traditional