Mandarin Chinese---Lesson 8 (review of lesson 1-7)

Chinese Language Learning Program

Lesson 8 – review of lesson 1-7

Hello, everyone. It’s so nice to see you again. This is Baixue’s Chinese Language Learning Program lesson8. We have already finished our learning of Chinese language pinyin. I really hope that you have already known how to pronounce all of the initials and finals with or without tones. Today, we are going to have a review for the classes we have finished.

First, we talked about what pinyin is and why you need pinyin. We also talked about tones and why tones are so important. We learned that Chinese character has only one syllable and each syllable has three parts: Initial (consonant) + final (vowel) + tone (4).

Second, we learned consonants of Chinese mandarin pinyin.

Third, we finished the learning of vowels of Chinese mandarin pinyin.

We also learned tones with the learning of vowels.

Then, we talked about the whole syllable. This table shows all of the pinyin we have learned in our previous classes. I will read them slowly.

We also talked about some “mix vowels” in our last class.

ia	ua
uo	iao
uai	ian
uan	üan
iang	uang
iong

There are several vowels we mentioned specially.

1.    “i”: When “i” is with z c s zh ch shi r to make syllables, these syllables are called the whole syllables and we read them directly. So the pronunciation of “i” is not “i”.

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

2.    *er is a special compound final. er-itself is a syllable and it cannot be with any consonant to make a syllable.

3.    yü(u): Some time when ü is with y we write it as u, but we still pronounce it as ü, because there is no such pronunciation yu in Chinese language pinyin. So, next time when you see yu, you will know how to pronounce it.

Now, we are done with the basic knowledge of Chinese mandarin pinyin. We will learn how to read or spell Chinese pinyin in our next class.

Ok, that is all for today.

xìe   xìe  (Thanks!)

谢    谢

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

再   见