The Chinese is totally different with English grammer, pronunciation, and characters. To better start to read, speak, and write Chinese, the 4 basic knowledges below, including pinyin, tones, characters and grammers, will help beginners walk into the world of Chinese quickly.
What is Pinyin?
Pinyin is the Chinese alphabats that refer to the pronunciation of a Chinese character. However, pinyin is not often shown along with a Chinese character only when it is for school age children to learn. For beginners, it's quite important to know Pinyin, which helps you pronumce a character quickly.
There are 21 initial consonants and 24 simple or compound vowels of a Chinese syllable in Chinese. Some of them looks just like an English letter but with totally different pronumciation.
21 initial consonants of a Chinese syllable
b
p
m
f
d
t
n
l
g
k
h
j
q
x
zh
ch
sh
r
z
c
24 vowels of a Chinese syllable
a
o
e
i
u
ü
ai
ei
ui
ao
ou
iu
ie
üe
er
an
en
in
un
ün
ang
eng
ing
ong
What Is the Four Tones?
The four tones system is used to differentiate the characters that with the same syllable. With different tones, a character or a word can refer to different meanings.
The first tone sounds even, just like monetone. It uses a horizontal line to put on a vowel. Check some examples and pronuncations here.
bō
pī
mā
tīn
līng
yǖ
The second tone uses a diagonal line to represent. Check some examples and pronuncations here.
lí
ná
cái
féi
wúi
yún
The third tone maybe a little bit difficult to pronunce for non-Chinese speakers. Its tone falls firstly and then rises. Check some examples and pronuncations here.
qǐ
lǔ
yuǎn
měi
niǔ
xǐng
When pronunce the fourth tone, it sounds like an angry expression. Check some examples and pronuncations here.
rì
hè
lǜ
shàng
cùi
mù
Basic Chinese Words That Are Used in Daily Life
The Chinese characters are called "Hanzi" in mandarin. Different with English, speakers are not able to pronunce a Chinese character by its strokes. Usually Pinyin is not shown with the character, only when it is designed for school age children to learn. Thus, you will have to memorize at least 1000 characters to support you read and write in Chinese.
Hanzi is a kind of hieroglyphic, which was created by a subject's appearance, meaning, or even sound. Here are some words that are frequently used in daily life.
Words
Meaning
Pinyin
你好
Hello
nǐ hǎo
谢谢
Thank you
xiè xie
再见
Goodbye
zài jiàn
对不起
Sorry
dùi bù qǐ
没关系
It's OK. Never mind.
mei guan xi
早上好
Good morning
zǎo shàng hǎo
下午好
Good afternoon
xià wǔ hǎo
晚安
Good night
wǎn ān
今天
Today
jīn tiān
明天
Tomorrow
míng tiān
洗手间
Bathroom
xǐ shǒu jiān
餐厅
Restaurant
cān tīng
酒店
Hotel
jiǔ diàn
地铁
Subway
dì tiě
超市
Supermarket
chāo shì
可乐
Coke cola
kě lè
咖啡
Coffe
kā fēi
矿泉水
Water
kuàng quán shuǐ
饮料
Drinks
yǐn liào
食物
Food
shí wù
Basic Chinese Grammers That Helps You Make Sentences
Though the grammer is totally different between Chinese and English, you will have no problem with any kind of sentence pattern once you get the rules below.
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