Mandarin Learning Resources

By Joel 大江 ~
| Blessings |

A little collection of Mandarin basics. For way more resources, see the Language Study links in the right sidebar.

(Updated 2008 May 17)

The “ABC’s” of Mandarin

To put it simply, there’s no simple way to explain Chinese phonetics in English – that’s why we’ve included sound files. Chinese and English both use sounds that the other language does not; we have to use diagrams of tongue placement and mirrors in our pronunciation lessons. This page will be a slowly growing collection of Chinese language helps. Here’s for starters…

注音符號 Zhùyīn / 汉语拼音 Hànyǔ Pīnyīn
Initials						Finals
ㄅ b	ㄉ d	ㄍ g	ㄐ j	ㄓ zhi (zh)	ㄗ zi (z)	ㄚ a	ㄞ ai	ㄢ an	ㄦ er	一 yi (i)
ㄆ p	ㄊ t	ㄎ k	ㄑ q	ㄔ chi (ch)	ㄘ ci (c)	ㄛ o	ㄟ ei	ㄣ en		ㄨ wu (u)
ㄇ m	ㄋ n	ㄏ h	ㄒ x	ㄕ shi (sh)	ㄙ si (s)	ㄜ e	ㄠ ao	ㄤ ang		ㄩ yu (u, ü)
ㄈ f	ㄌ l			ㄖ ri (r)		ㄝ ê	ㄡ ou	ㄥ eng

The chart shows two systems: Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (the romanization/phonetic system used by China) and Zhùyīn or “BoPoMoFo” (the phonetic system used in Taiwan’s elementary schools). The table is organized according to Zhùyīn, since this is the way Mandarin speakers phonetically organize their own language. You can phonetically represent (“spell”) Chinese characters with these symbols. Our friend Charles recorded these sounds for us. He does news radio in Taipei. His wife Angel, who also works on the air in Taipei (she did this commercial for PEI), will be our Mandarin tutor starting in September. Some of these sounds – like /zh/ and /ch/ or /x/, /s/, and /sh/ – will sound annoyingly similar to native English speakers, but I promise they’re not.

You can download mp3′s here:

Track 1 (once through the entire chart)
Track 2 (once through the chart with space to repeat each sound)

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Complete Mandarin syllable chart

Every possible syllable in Chinese is categorized by pinyin in the PDF file found here:

In case you’re wondering, there are 409 possible syllables in Mandarin, give or take a few. This comes courtesy of Albert Wolfe at LaowaiChinese.net, a great online resource for English speaking Mandarin students.

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Realistic Expectations & Setting Language Learning Goals

Martin Symonds, a linguist who’s lived 30 years in Taiwan/China and produces the “Chinese Made Easier” series, gives this projection for what regular Western adult Mandarin students can hope to accomplish:

Full-time Mandarin Study
# of years	1	2	4	8	!??!
Proficiency Level	Survival	Daily Living	Minimum Work	Full Work	Native

I blogged about it here. See a similar language learning time-scale here.

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~ Comment (2) ~

2 replies to “Mandarin Learning Resources”

Brian said...

Holy Cow! There’re a lot of sounds that are almost exactly alike!

Joel said...

YOU’RE TELLING US!!! :D

I think, though I’m not sure, that they can be grouped according to tongue placement. I’m asking next lesson (on Thursday). It’s amazing how much easier it gets when you know where to put your tongue and shape you mouth… way easier than just trying to mimic sounds.

It goes both ways though. I was tutoring these teenage twins last night who mix up all their long and short vowels (short i becomes long e, short e becomes long a, and getting them to run down the list of short vowels is frightening). We have some great curriculum in this area, but I was amazed at how they simply don’t hear the differences in the sounds. We do drills where they repeat after me, and they think they’re saying it right when really it’s so obviously not (to my ears). “Ship.” “Sheep!” “Itch.” “Each!” “Ed.” “Aid!” “No: Ed, Ed, Ed.” “Aid, aid, aid!” R’s and L’s, and O’s and L’s are also bad.

Of course, same thing happens to us in Chinese class when we’re doing tones or certain sounds. Sometimes you get in a weird rut where no matter how hard you try to say “shí” in the middle of a sentence it keeps coming out as “shī” and everyone can hear it (including your spouse) except you. You get the tones wrong and it’s like randomly changing vowel sounds in English – good chance they won’t have a clue what you’re trying to say.