HSK 0 · Lire le pinyin sans deviner en anglais
Chinese Foundations Sujet 4 3:09 Explications en anglais + exemples en mandarin · les sous-titres suivent le texte parlé
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Transcript
Pinyin uses English letters with Chinese meanings, and six of them mislead beginners every time: q, which is a light ch; x, the smiling hiss; c, which says ts; zh, a heavy curled j; r, the sh hiss with voice, nothing like English r; and u with dots, the rounded ee. Learn the six traps and two spelling shortcuts, and you can read any new word aloud from its pinyin. The letters are borrowed; the sounds are not.
The six trap letters in one breath. 七, seven: a light ch with the tongue forward, never k. 西, west: the smiling hiss. 词, word: ts, like the end of cats. 中, middle: a heavy j with the tongue curled. 人, person: the sh hiss with voice, nothing like English r. 女, female: say ee and round your lips. And u-with-dots keeps its dots after n and l, but after j, q, x and y it drops the dots and keeps the sound, like 去, to go.
Pinyin trims two common finals to keep words short. I-o-u becomes i-u, so nine, 九, is spelled j-i-u, with the long i-oh-oo hiding inside. U-e-i becomes u-i, so water, 水, is spelled s-h-u-i. The tone mark rides the last vowel in both, which is the ui-marks-the-i rule from topic two. The spelling is trimmed; the sound is unchanged.
Here is how to read a new word aloud. Meet 谢谢, thanks. First split it: 谢 plus 谢. Then sound each part: x is the smiling hiss, ie says yeh, and the second syllable taps light, the neutral tone from topic three. Then say it whole: 谢谢, thanks. Split, sound, say, always in that order, and never guess by English first, because the guess wins and the word loses.
Watch out for two things. The r is not the English r: no lip curl at all, the tongue curled back as for sh, with voice added. And the dots on u are not decoration after n and l: 女 with dots is female, and 怒, with no dots, is a different word entirely. Long pinyin words are short words glued together, so practise the glue, not the lump.
Check yourself. Which letter says ts: q, c, or zh? How do you say the letter x: like z, like ks, or the smiling hiss? What full final hides inside 水? And after q, what does the u in q-u do with its dots? If the traps stop trapping, your pinyin reads as Chinese.