a practical guide to chinese diction
What is Pinyin?
Pinyin (拼音 or Chinese Phonetic Alphabet ) was developed in the 1950s to help improve literacy rates in the newly founded People's Republic of China. Pinyin is a system for romanizing (writing using the Roman/Latin alphabet) the sounds of the Chinese language (Mandarin). Some letters that look familiar to non-Chinese speakers have been repurposed to represent the special sounds of Mandarin Chinese.
Every Chinese Pinyin contains two parts: Initial (consonant) and final (single vowel or compound vowel). Every Mandarin syllable can be spelled with exactly one initial followed by one final, except for the special syllable /er/ or when a trailing /-r/ is considered part of a syllable.
A Pinyin Chart is provided at the bottom of this page. It contains the Pinyin and IPA for ALL Chinese characters.
Why are there tones?
Spoken Chinese, like all varieties of Chinese dialects, is tonal. This means that in addition to consonants and vowels, the pitch contour of a syllable is used to distinguish words from each other. However, in singing, the rule of tone does not apply since the singing pitch of a syllable overrules the spoken tone.
The connection between Pinyin and the Chinese character
As we know, the Chinese language is not phonetic, which means the sound of a Chinese character is not spelled out like in German or English; you can not pronounce a Chinese word just by looking at it. Therefore, Pinyin was invented to help people with the pronunciation. This page aims to help non-native speakers with Pinyin, but building a connection between Pinyin and real Chinese characters needs practice.
A word-to-word translation and IPA transcription file for every song will be provided on the Chinese choral music list.
Resources
Here are some useful resources to further explore Chinese diction
Chinese Pronunciation Wiki | Chinese Grammar Wiki | Chinese Vocabulary Wiki: These three websites have detailed descriptions of Chinese Pronunciation, Grammar, and Vocabulary
Yoyo Interactive Chinese Pinyin Chart: This website has a Pinyin Chart where you can click on every Pinyin, which will play back the sound.
the vowels
Some vowels are tricky for English speakers since English has no such pronunciation or different pronunciations. Here is the guide for those tricky sounds. (all the underlined spelling needs extra attention). Visit Yoyo Interactive Chinese Pinyin Chart; click the Pinyin for a demonstration.
Vowel priority
In compound vowels, /u-/ and /i-/ serve as /w/ and /j/ glide, they are not stressed. For example. /lia/, /a/ is stressed, /duan/, /an/ is stressed
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a /[ɑ]: like the /a/ sound in the English words "ah" or "ha" or "father"
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ai/[ɑɪ]: like the /ai/ in the English words "Thai" and "aisle"
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ao/[ɑʊ]: like the English word "Taoism"/"Dao" which are imported into English from Chinese
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an/[ɑn]: like the Italian word "andante."
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ang/[ɑŋ]: similar to the English /ong/ sound in "King Kong." The "-ng" is nasalized, so the "a" vowel changes slightly
the tricky consonants
Some consonants are tricky for English speakers since English has no such pronunciation or different pronunciations. Here is the guide for those tricky sounds. (all the underlined spelling needs extra attention). Visit Yoyo Interactive Chinese Pinyin Chart; click the Pinyin for a demonstration.
In Chinese, consonants: b/[b], d/[d], f/[f], g/[g], h/[h], k/[k], l/[l], m/[m], n/[n], p/[p], s/[s], t/[t], are very much like the same consonants in English. There is no v/[v] sound in Manderin Chinese. w/[w] and y/[j] are considered vowels
Consonant /c/ (Alveolar, affricate, aspirated, and unvoiced) is simply a "ts" sound, like in the English words "cats" and "Watson" and "robots"
Consonant /z/ (Alveolar, affricate, unaspirated, and voiced) sounds similar to an English "dz" sound, like in the English words "kids" and "loads"
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/zi/, zzzz + vocal fold vibration
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/ci/, tsss + vocal fold vibration
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/si/, sssss + vocal fold vibration