Composition of Pinyin

Thursday, January 12, 2023

A pinyin syllable is usually composed of an initial, a final and a tone. The consonant that starts a syllable is called the initial, and the part after the initial is the final. For example, in “lǐ” , “l” is the initial, “i”is the final, and “^” is the tone mark. some syllables do not have initials. A final and a tone can also make a syllable, such as “é”.

syllable, 拼音, pinyin

Initials

Initials, 声母, sheng mu

Finals

Final, 韵母, yun mu

Chinese is a tone language. Different tones may result in different meanings. There are four basic tones in Chinese. They are marked as “- ”(the 1st tone),“﹐”(the 2nd tone),“^”(the 3rd tone) and“`”(the 4th tone) respectively. For example, mā, má, mǎ, mà. Tones are marked above the main vowel of the pinyin syllable.

tone, 声调, sheng diao

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