Most Chinese words are two characters, not single characters. The exceptions are: i) pronouns like 我， 你 ii) grammatical particles like 了，过， 吗 and iii) words with classical Chinese origins like 马 and 笔. Because words not characters are the basic units of spoken communication it’s important to learn to pronounce words. That means working …
Chinese Pronunciation: Practicing Tones in Isolation Read More »
Whenever you see the 3rd tone described in a textbook it will always be shown as a falling-rising tone. Unfortunately it is hardly ever pronounced this way. A much better conception of the third tone is a “low tone” but even that isn’t sufficient. The complexity arises because the third tone is almost always altered …
Chinese Pronunciation: The 3rd tone is NOT Falling Rising Read More »
R is a bit of slippery Chinese pronunciation. At the beginning of words it’s very similar to the English “r” but with a slight buzz but certainly not as strong as a rolled Spanish “r”. Instead it’s somewhere between the English “r” and “l” sound so takes a little bit of practice to locate the …
Chinese Pronunciation: The slippery Chinese –r sound Read More »
If you get the distinction between u and ü (explained previously in this article) then the distinction between Zh, Ch, Sh and J, Q, X becomes easy. Without understanding the distinction Chinese pronunciation can often seem insurmountable. This state of affairs is not helped by the fact that these initials are not the same pronunciation …
Chinese Pronunciation – Zh/J, Ch/Q, Sh/X and why we learn these incorrectly Read More »
Note: See the bottom of this article to learn how to get free human feedback on how good your u and ü are. Very useful! Boy oh boy this one is a doozy. That said, if you nail the difference between the u and ü sounds in Chinese then a whole bunch of other sounds …
Chinese Pronunciation: The difference between U and Ü Read More »
Don’t get me wrong, pinyin is a god-send for early Chinese language learning. You can use pinyin to get up and running and communicating in basic Chinese much faster than if you had to rely on characters. However, the fact that pinyin looks like English causes confusion. Furthermore, the fact that some of the letters …