| Pinyin | |
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In Chinese, unlike in English where the words are built by just 26 letters, each word is built by characters that have a certain set of strokes. There are thousands of these different characters, and to help the learner (native or not) to pronouce the words correctly, we use a pinyin system.
A pingyin contains an initial and a final -- 23 initials and 26 finals in total. As you will notice, the initials are constants and finals vowels. Also, the pinyins are written on a 4-line grid, each letter occupies certain room. The following lesson will help you to learn how to write and pronounce these pingyins correctly. The sounds of these pinyins are recorded in .wavs. To hear, just click on HEAR IT. Also, Chinese has 5 different types of tones, which means a word with the same Pinyin spelling can have 5 different sounds.
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