Initals and Finals
Words expressed in pinyin use a set of 21 sounds representing the beginning of the word called initials, and a set of 37 sounds representing the end of the word called finals. These combine to form about 420 different sounds.
Example:
The word for “Flower” expressed in pinyin is: huā
In this word, the letter “h” is the initial and “uā” is the final.
Words are often combined to form compound words
The word for “China” expressed in pinyin is: zhōngguó
zhōng means middle.
Initial: “zh”
Final: “ōng”
guó means country.
Initial: “g”
Final: “uó”
Tones
Words in Mandarin that have the same pronunciation can have different meanings depending on how the word is said. The "tone" of a word describes how the the pitch of the speaker's voice changes as the word is said. There are four "tones" in Mandarin which we will cover in detail in the "Tones" section. The tones are represented in pinyin by marks above the words.
There are a number of spelling rules and exceptions to rules that you will learn in these lessons.
Recommended romanization-related books in English
Those who want to go directly to the readings themselves, rather than browse through the tables of contents of the books below to find the sample chapters and other excerpts, can jump to the list of readings available on this site.
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Appropriateness [of Chinese Characters] to East Asian Languages. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
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Basic Rules of Hanyu Pinyin Orthography, from The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts, by Zhou Youguang, translated by Zhang Liqing.
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Breakup of Homophones, from The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts, by Zhou Youguang, translated by Zhang Liqing.
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Chinese, from Visible Speech, by John DeFrancis.
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Chinese Characters and the Lexicon. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
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Chinese Writing. From The Writing on the Wall: How Asian Orthography Curbs Creativity, by William Hannas.
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Confusing Language with Writing, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
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Cultural Independence, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
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A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the Chinese System of Writing, by Peter S. Du Ponceau.
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Fenollosa, Pound and the Chinese Character, from The Selected Works of George A. Kennedy.
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The Function of Phonophores (sound-bearing elements of characters), from The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts, by Zhou Youguang, translated by Zhang Liqing.
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The Homonym Problem. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
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The Ideographic Myth, from The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis.
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Implications of the Soviet Dungan Script for Chinese Language Reform, by Victor Mair.
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Introduction to Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning, by J. Marshall Unger.
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Kanji and Literacy, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
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The Modern Japanese Writing System, from Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines, by J. Marshall Unger.
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Modifier-Modified Adjectives [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
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'Monosyllabic' Chinese. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
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Morphemes versus Words. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
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One State, One People, One Language, from Nationalism and Language Reform in China, by John DeFrancis.
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Personal Names [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
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Political Maneuvering, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
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The Price of Tradition, from The Fifth Generation Fallacy, by J. Marshall Unger.
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Rationale: why investigate Chinese words?. From The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach, by Jerome L. Packard.
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Scholarly Neglect, from Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines, by J. Marshall Unger.
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Sound and Meaning in the History of Characters: Views of China's Earliest Script Reformers, by Victor Mair. From Difficult Characters: Interdisciplinary Studies of Chinese and Japanese Writing, edited by Mary S. Erbaugh.
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Transitivity across Languages. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
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Transliteration of Foreign Place Names and Personal Names [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
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Unification of Chinese 'Dialects'. From Asia's Orthographic Dilemma, by William Hannas.
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Use of the Hyphen; Abbreviations and Short Forms [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
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Verb-Complement Constructions [in Hanyu Pinyin], from Chinese Romanization: Pronunciation and Orthography, by Yin Binyong.
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Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, by David Moser. From Schriftfestschrift: Essays on Writing and Language in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday (Sino-Platonic Papers No. 27), edited by Victor Mair.