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 »
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 …
If I was allowed to only use one practice method to learn Mandarin Chinese tones it would be this: tone pairs. Tone pair drills are simply the most powerful way to get a intuitive grip on Chinese tones. Unfortunately they are woefully underused. I want to use this article to introduce the concept and show you …
Tone Pair Drills: The Single Best Method for Learning Chinese Tones Read More »
This is part of our Sensible Pinyin Course. To see an overview of the course check out this Sensible Pinyin Course homepage! Nasal sounds are those pronounced through the nose. There are two types in Chinese – front nasals and back nasals. The front nasals are formed with the tongue in the front of the …
This is part of our Sensible Pinyin Course. To see an overview of the course check out this Sensible Pinyin Course homepage! In this lesson we’ll be moving rapidly through the basic (non-nasal) compound finals. If you missed the introduction to compounds be sure to read it first so that we are all on the same …
Z, C and S are the final pinyin consonants we’ll be covering. In the last section on Zh, Ch, Sh we looked at the following relationship: Zh = J Ch = Q Sh = X But with the tongue tip curled back in a higher, curled position against the hard palate Using Chinese sounds to …
Sensible Pinyin Course: Tricky Consonants Z, C, S Read More »
This is part of our Sensible Pinyin Course. To see an overview of the course check out this Sensible Pinyin Course homepage! The compounds fill out the remaining sounds that we need to cover in Chinese. A compound is simply a sound created from two or more other sounds. For example -ao is a compound …
This is part of our Sensible Pinyin Course. To see an overview of the course check out this Sensible Pinyin Course homepage! Still with us? Believe me you are doing well. We’ve covered all the basics and a lot of the slightly weird sounds in Chinese. This is the home stretch! In this section we’re going …
Sensible Pinyin Course: Tricky Consonants Zh, Ch, Sh and R Read More »
This is part of our Sensible Pinyin Course. To see an overview of the course check out this Sensible Pinyin Course homepage! Pinyin we’ll going to cover this time – g, k, h, j, q, x. This section introduces some of the more difficult consonant final sounds. These are similar to sounds found in English …