Pinyin and Tone Discussion(Discussion about pinyin and tones)

Chinese Pronunciation
What is Pinyin?
Chinese is not a phonetic language. The pronunciation is not related to the writing of Chinese words (characters). A special tool called Pinyin (pronouncing the sound) is created people to learn Mandarin pronunciation. Pinyin is a way to transcribe Chinese characters so people can pronounce it. The writing of Pinyin is similar to English alphabet.

If you listen carefully you will find Chinese is a very beautiful language as it has more musical sounds (vowels) than noise (consonants). Except for nasal sound like "n" and "m", all Chinese syllables ends with vowels. So we call them "Final Sounds". The consonants at the beginning of a syllable are called "Initial Sounds".

Most of Mandarin sounds are Easy for English speaker to pronounce some sounds are Difficult and requires more practice.

   
Chinese Tones
Chinese is a tonal language. Tones are the changes of the pitch in pronunciation of a syllable. There are 4 tones in Mandarin Chinese. Each Chinese word (character) carries a tone. Different tones carry different meanings.


if you have any questions about pinyin and tones, welcome to post them here,we will be glad to give you a hand.:)

I think this a good way to visualise the tones. I think if you can memorize this graph it should make it easier to be able to hear which tone it is.
[img]http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com/image-files/chinese-tone-diagram.jpg[/img]
If you can't get the graph, or you're trying to explain it verbally, it's good to think of it as:
1. high flat
2. rising
3. low flat (yes I know)
4. falling

The reason I have low flat for 3. is because in many situations you don't use the rising bit of it, and if you do, it comes in by itself as you pronounce a low flat tone anyways.

[[i] Last edited by  Blacksun at 2006-11-17 22:59 [/i]]

Tone

????Chinese is a tonal language. There are four basic tones in putonghua as shown by the following tone marks.
????(1)The High and level Tone shown by ???-???, eg.
????(2)The Rising Tone shown by????¡ì@??? eg.
????(3)The Falling-and-Rising Tone shown by ???????? eg.
????(4)The Falling Tone shown by ????¡ìA??? eg.

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp01.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp02.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp03.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp04.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp05.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp06.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp07.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp08.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp09.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.gchinese.com/wp-music/pronounce1/cp10.jpg[/img]