In “Pin Yin”, we talked about why Chinese Pinyin is so critical for learning Chinese, and why to learn Pinyin first is a must to build a solid pronunciation foundation for your listening and speaking skills. To start learning Mandarin Chinese language from pinyin is compulsory in Chinese schools and basically, every Chinese in Mainland China starts learning pinyin from kindergarten (5-6 years old). In Chinese, each character corresponds to one syllable. Chinese syllables consist of three elements: initial sound, final sound and tone. The initial sounds are consonants and the final sounds contain at least one vowel. Some syllables consist only of an initial sound or a final sound. Mandarin Chinese language has 21 consonants and 35 vowels. The initial and final sounds make a total of 56 basic sounds. Combinations of initials and finals plus the special cases result in more than 400 mono-syllabic sounds. Applying the four tones of Mandarin Chinese to this, we get a total of around 1,600 unique syllables. Pronunciation of Mandarin has two aspects: syllables and tones. Each can be practiced separately, but when it comes to speaking Mandarin Chinese you must memorize words with their proper tones.
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