0.8 Reading and Typing Pinyin — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read any cell of the syllable table, saying which initial and which final it crosses and why many of the cells are empty. Put a tone mark on the right vowel letter in any syllable, including the ones whose spelling changed in the previous lesson. Type Chinese characters with a pinyin keyboard, including the vowel ü, and say why the keyboard will never correct your tones. Read a short sentence written in pinyin alone, out loud, with the right tones and without looking at characters. Prerequisites : lesson 0.7, which you can open again here: 0.7 Sounds and Tones . This lesson assembles the pieces from the seven before it and adds nothing new about the mouth, so if any of the consonants or vowels are still shaky, go back rather than forward. Mandarin has roughly four hundred syllables if you ignore tone, and about thirteen hundred if you count it. That is a small, closed set, and it can be laid out as a grid: the twenty-one initials down one side, the finals across the other. Textbooks print that grid on one page and call it the syllable table. Its real value is not as something to memorise but as something to consult, because once you can read it you can pronounce almost any Mandarin word from its pinyin, applying the tone changes and toneless syllables of lesson 0.5 as you go, whether or not you know what it means or which characters write it. The grid is also full of holes, and the holes are systematic rather than accidental. Learning which combinations do not exist is worth as much as learning which do, because it cuts down the number of things your ear has to keep apart and it tells you when you have misheard. How the table is built One axis is the initials. There are twenty-one, and the lessons so far have used nearly all of them. They fall into six groups by where in the mouth they are made, and reading down the second column of this table is a review of the whole volume. Group Initials In one phrase Lips b p m f b unaspirated, p aspirated; f as in English. Behind the teeth d t n l d unaspirated, t aspirated; n and l as in English. Back of the mouth g k h g unaspirated, k aspirated; h with more friction than English. Flat j q x The wide, smiling series. Always followed by an i or ü sound. Curled back zh ch sh r The retroflex series, tongue tip turned up. Against the teeth z c s The forward series; z is the ts of cats . The other axis is the finals, of which there are about thirty-five. They fall into four groups by how the final begins, and most printed syllable tables use this grouping, so it is worth knowing in the shape below. One final sits awkwardly: iong is written with i, and is listed with the i finals here, but it is said with rounded lips, close to ü, so some tables follow the sound and put it in the ü group instead. The third column shows what each final looks like when it has no initial in front of it, which is the spelling rule from the previous lesson. Group Finals Standing alone Plain a o e ai ei ao ou an en ang eng ong er a o e ai ei ao ou an en ang eng er Beginning with i i ia ie iao iu ian in iang ing iong yi ya ye yao you yan yin yang ying yong Beginning with u u ua uo uai ui uan un uang ueng wu wa wo wai wei wan wen wang weng Beginning with ü ü üe üan ün yu yue yuan yun Two things in that table repay a second look. The final ong never stands alone, which is why the first row is one item shorter on the right. And in the u row the spellings change more than the letters suggest: ui becomes wei and un becomes wen, because the vowel that the shorter spelling hides comes back out when there is room for it. The sounds in a table Now cross the two axes. If all twenty-one initials took all thirty-five finals there would be more than seven hundred syllables, and there are about four hundred, so nearly half the grid is empty. The gaps are not random: each group of initials accepts only certain groups of finals, and the table below is the whole pattern. Read the middle column as a permission and the third as a prohibition. Initials Final groups they take What that rules out b p m f Plain finals and the i group. f takes almost none of the i group. Never the ü group, and almost none of the u group beyond plain u. d t n l Plain, i and u groups. n and l also take ü and üe. Outside j q x, only n and l ever meet ü, which is why they need the dots. g k h Plain and u groups. Never the i group and never the ü group. j q x The i group and the ü group only. Never a plain final, and never a real u, so a u written straight after them is always ü. zh ch sh r z c s Plain and u groups, plus the buzzing i that is not a real i. Never a glide beginning with i or ü, so zhi and ji can never be confused on paper. No initial All four groups, respelled with y, w or yu. Nothing, except that ong cannot begin a syllable. The fifth row deserves a note. In zhi, chi, shi, ri, zi, ci and si the letter i does not stand for the vowel of English see . It stands for a buzz held on whatever tongue position the initial has just made, and it has no independent existence: there is no syllable in Mandarin that is that vowel alone. So 四 sì and 十 shí do not rhyme with 西 xī, and if you read all three with the same vowel you are hearing a rhyme that is not there. Once you trust the pattern you can check a pinyin spelling before you try to say it. If you see jung, it is a misprint or not pinyin at all, because j never takes a plain final. If you see shü, the same. If you see xu, the vowel is ü. This is what it means to be able to read the table rather than to have memorised it. Where the tone mark goes The mark goes on the vowel letter your mouth opens widest for, and the working rule from the first lesson still holds: mark a if there is one, otherwise o, otherwise e, otherwise the last vowel letter. What the previous lesson added is a set of syllables whose spelling has changed, so it is worth seeing the rule survive them. Syllable Mark on Why 好 hǎo a There is an a, so the a takes it. 谢 xiè