freeCodeCamp/curriculum/challenges/english/blocks/zh-a1-learn-single-finals/606104b17eec94d3295719df.md

id, title, challengeType, dashedName, lang

id	title	challengeType	dashedName	lang
606104b17eec94d3295719df	Task 1	24	task-1	zh-CN

--description--

What Is Pinyin

Pinyin, literally meaning "spelled sounds", is a romanization system for Chinese. It uses the Latin alphabet to show how to pronounce Chinese characters.

Pinyin shows how a character sounds. It does not show what the character means.

In this curriculum, you'll learn Pinyin for the standard spoken Chinese, Mandarin. Other varieties of Chinese use different systems.

Why do You Learn Pinyin First

Learning Pinyin first helps you learn Chinese more easily. It lets you:

• read and type Chinese even before you know the characters.

• pronounce words correctly from the beginning.

• look up new words using their sounds.

While there's a lot to learn about Pinyin, you don't need to master it all before starting to use Chinese. In this chapter, you'll learn new Pinyin concepts while practicing to use them in forming common Chinese words.

Pinyin Syllable

A syllable is a single unit of pronunciation. In Pinyin, each syllable represents a character and has three parts:

Initial

An initial is the consonant sound at the beginning of the syllable. For example, in ma, the initial is m.

There are 21 initials in Pinyin.

Final

A final is the part of the syllable that comes after the initial. It can be:

• single final, which is a single vowel, like a in ma,

• compound final, which is a combination of vowels, like ai in hai, or

• nasal final, which is a vowel followed by n or ng, like an in shan and ong in gong.

A syllable may have no initial, but it always has a final. For example, ai.

There are 36 finals in Pinyin.

Tone

This is the pitch pattern or variation of pitch of a syllable. There are four main tones, represented by symbols ˉ, ˊ, ˇ, and ˋ, as well as the neutral tone, which has no symbol.

Tones are very important in Chinese. When the initial and final stay the same but the tone changes, the syllable can represent a different Chinese character. Take ma as an example:

Pinyin	Tone	Pitch Pattern	Character	Meaning
mā	first tone	high, level	妈	mother
má	second tone	high, rising	麻	hemp
mǎ	third tone	falling and rising	马	horse
mà	fourth tone	falling	骂	to scold
ma	neutral tone	short and soft	吗	question particle

Even the same character can also have different meanings when it is pronounced with different tones. For example: 你好 (nǐ hǎo) means "hello", in which 好 (hǎo) has the third tone and means "good". 爱好 (ài hào) means "hobby", in which 好 (hào) has the fourth tone and means "to like".

Pinyin is pretty magical, right? As you move through this curriculum, it will help you whenever you meet new characters and words. Step by step, you'll unlock more of the Chinese language.

Are you ready? Let's get started with six basic finals in next tasks.

--assignment--

I've read the introduction to Pinyin.