may say I don t know, there s no syllables to guide me in the pronunciation? That s right,

Chinese characters are not presented with syllables like English. How about I use the

letters ai to represent the word? The letters ai give you the guideline on how to pronounce

the word and this is called a pinyin.

Pinyin history

Before we continue, I want to share with you some history about pinyin. In 1949, when the

People s Republic of China was established, the country was still in a difficult situation

and the literacy rate dropped continuously. The government spent a few years developing

and testing the best systems to help Chinese citizens learn and read Chinese. At the end,

they agreed that using a letter alphabet to represent the sounds of Chinese characters

worked best for them. And this is how pinyin was created. Now that we know pinyin was intentionally

created for Chinese citizens, we need to read the letter alphabet the Chinese way because

some of the sounds are different. For English speakers, you will find "l" is pronounced

and "ong" is pronounced . Anyway, Pinyin is a helpful tool and the most effective way

to learn Mandarin. Especially for Chinese people, pinyin is a gift. Why? With pinyin,

instead of using characters, Chinese people can type using letters to express themselves

in Chinese on the Internet and on their smartphones.

A basic pinyin has 3 elements an initial , a 声母 shēng mǔ, final 韵母 yùn mǔ and,

and a tone 声调 shēng tiào. There are 21 initials + 2 special initials, 24 finals

(4 tones + 1 neutral tone). An initial is the beginning, a final is the ending and a

tone is always placed on top of the final. The good news is that overall, pinyin is pretty

straight forward. Each syllable represents only one Chinese character and consists of

2-6 letters. Alright, let me show you how initials, finals and tones work together in

pinyin. The word 龙 lóng is made up of an initial, a final and a tone. Remember l is

pronounced as the final ong is pronounced as and with the second tone "lōng" "lóng"

"lǒng" "lòng" , it is "lóng" . I know you are still a bit confused. That s okay, I m

just showing you how pinyin works and we will do many practices together in future videos.

Before we say goodbye, let me share with you how tones work. The combination of initials

and finals can form 413 syllables in common use and they can represent thousands of Chinese

characters. How? Because of tones. When an Initial and a final match together, they form

a syllable and the syllable can mean at least four different things depending on which tone

of the four you use. And of course some words share the same tone but have different meanings

and are written differently. Tones seem to be the most challenging task for pinyin learners.

Again, I ll share with you tricks and tips about pinyin pronunciation. Along with the

lessons and exercises will provide, I need you to spend some time learning and understanding

pinyin on your own. That s all for today. Subscribe to our channel and stay tuned. I

ll see you on the next video. Happy learning, Bye!