Mandarin Chinese--Lesson 3 (Chinese alphabet-Simple Finals)

Lesson 3 – Chinese Language (Simple Vowels)

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Baixue’s Chinese Language Learning Program. Last time, we finished the learning of the consonants of Chinese language pinyin (Chinese mandarin pinyin). I hope you have already remembered how to pronounce them. Today, we are going to learn vowels.

From this table, we can see that there are 24 Chinese mandarin Vowel finals. There are 6 simple vowel finals ：a o e i u ü. There are 9 compound finals: ai ei ui ao ou iu ie üe er, and 9 nasal finals: an en in un ang eng ing ong. What is simple vowel, compound vowel and nasal vowel? You can see from what they look like. a o e i u ü have only one vowel, so they are called simple finals; ei ui ao ou iu ie üe er have more than one vowels or have a vowel and a consonant, so they are compound finals. an en in un ang eng ing ong combine a vowel with the nasal ending -n or –ng, so they are nasal finals.

Today, we are gonna learn these 6 simple finals. Please listen to me first.

Now, I will add tones to these simple finals pronunciation. Please listen to me first.

I will give you some examples for these simple finals. But before we read the examples, I hope you have already remembered the consonants of Chinese mandarin pinyin.

Chinese pinyin finals	Pronunciation of finals compare to that of in English	examples
a	The pinyin final “a” like “o” in English word “mother”.	mā   bà 妈    爸
o	The pinyin final “o” like “o” in English word “frog”.	wǒ  mō 我   摸
e	This final is little different from the English on, its pronunciation is “e”, not like “e” in “jelly”, or in “bell”.	gè   hē 个   喝
*i	The pinyin final “i” like “ea” in English word “east”.	dì  qí 地   骑
u	The pinyin final “u” like “u” in English word “ruler”.	hǔ   bù 虎   不
ü	It’s pronounced with the same tongue position as when pronouncing final “i”, but the shape of lips are the same as when pronouncing final “u”	qǜ   yǚ 去   雨

Note: *i : Please remember that when “i” is with z c s zh ch shi r, its sound is different, it is not “i”. I will give you some examples.

zǐ   zì 紫   字	zhī  zhǐ 知    纸
cí   cì 辞   次	chī  chì 吃   斥
sī  sì 丝  四	shí  shì 时   是
dì    qí 地   骑	rì 日

So, you can see that these are totally different pronunciation when i is with different consonants. Please remember these 7 examples.

Please read after me.

Now, we are done with the simple vowels of Chinese mandarin (language) pinyin. Today’s homework is to practice the pronunciation of these 6 finals, especially the pronunciation of i with different consonants, and to compare them between Chinese and English and to find what the difference is. The more you practice, the better your pronunciation becomes.

Ok, that is all for today. We will learn compound vowels in our next class.

xìe   xìe  (Thanks!)

谢    谢

 zài  jiàn  (Bye! Or See you next time!)

再   见