Learn Chinese With Sheldon

The Chinese Phonetic Alphabet

Xingbang Liu / Sheldon


Rock Chiseled character flickr photo by afflictedmonkey shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

Did anyone learn or know some Chinese before?

Reason to learn

    Travel

    Culture

For fun...

Goal:

    1. Part of Phonetic Alphabet

    2. Tones

    3. Combinations

    4. Greetings and self-introduction

Phonetic Alphabet

Initials

Finals


Thousand character classic (千字文, qiān zì wén) in clerical and seal scripts, by Wén Zhēngmíng (文徵明), dated 1503 flickr photo by foliosus shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

Initials: the first part of the system

Finals: the last part of the system

You can know the pronunciation by combine them together

    Initials
    b p m f d t
    n l g k h j
    q x z c s zh
    ch sh r w y
    Finals
    a o e i u ü
    ai ei ui ao ou iu
    ie üe er an en in
    un ün ang eng ing ong

Initials:

    m n h j z sh w

Finals:

    o e i ao en ing

Tones

Can distinguish meaning or feeling


Knowledge hopefully becomes Wisdom flickr photo by janetvincent shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license

Examples:

    mō 摸 touch

    mó 磨 grind

    mǒ 抹 wipe

    mò 墨 ink

Combination

pronounce by sequence and you will get it


Chinese characters flickr photo by 喳 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-ND) license

Assignment:

nǐ hǎo, wǒ jiào ...

你好，我叫__NAME__。

Hello, my name is ...

For fast learner:

nǐ jiào shén me míng zi?

你叫什么名字？

What is your name?

Resources:

The End