File last modified:

Slightly Geeky Guide to

Pronouncing Romanized Mandarin

Without Knowing Any Mandarin

(Generally More Than You Actually Need To Know)

Overview

There are several major dialects of Chinese: Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokkien, and Shanghainese, to name four. The official national language of China is a standardized variant of the Mandarin dialect, based on Beijing speech, and most Chinese terms used in English books are borrowed from Mandarin. (Occasional writers focusing exclusively on Hong Kong or Taiwan may use Cantonese or Hokkien, respectively. A separate "Slightly Geeky Guide" is provided for Hokkien. Link)

In Chinese this standardized, official dialect has four effectively interchangeable names:

• Pǔtōnghuà 普通话 ("ordinary language" —Mainland Chinese usage)
• Huáyǔ 华语 ("Chinese language" —Singapore usage)
• Guóyǔ (= Gwoyeu) 國語 ("national language" —Taiwan usage).
• Hànyǔ 汉语 ("Hàn language")

All four Chinese terms are sometimes borrowed into English.

Chinese is written with a distinctive, non-alphabetic orthography, the famous "Chinese characters." When Chinese words are represented in English books, they are "Romanized," that is, transcribed into Latin letters. There have been several systems for doing this. For most English books published since about 1975, all you need to know about is the official system, which is called Pinyin ("phonetics"), or Hanyu Pinyin ("Chinese phonetics"). This page describes some of the ways in which Latin letters used in Pinyin differ from the way they are used in English. (Older publications use other systems.)

On other pages of this web site you can find considerable further discussion. Click here for the entry page. A separate page of this web site provides sound files with specimen pronunciations of selected romanized syllables. Some browsers will and some will not play sound files, and some require user approval to play them. Link

The least you need to know: For Mandarin transcribed in Hanyu Pinyin, the single most important points to remember are that

• C before a vowel is always like English TS, never like K.
• Q is like English CH, never like K
• X is like English SH, never like KS
• J is like English J, never like French J.
• I is silent after C, S, Z, R, and H.
• YAN is pronounced like English "yen," never like "yon."

If you get those bits right, people will forgive most other missteps.

More broadly, the following spellings are the ones that an English speaker probably needs to pay special attention to.

Consonants

• C before a vowel = like English TS (as in "hats") (never like English S, K, or CH)
  Example: General Cao Cao (tsaw tsaw)
• Q = like English CH (as in "cheat") (never like English K)
  Example: the Qin (cheen) Dynasty
• R = something between American R and French J, a ZH-like sound)
  Example: Confucians were called Ru (zhoo)
• X = like English SH (as in "sheet") (never like English X)
  Example: the Xia (shyah) Dynasty
• Z before a vowel = like English DZ or DS (as in "fads") (never like the Z in Zeke)
  Example: Zásuì (dzah-sway) Mandarin for "chop suey" (Based on Cantonese zaahp seoi, literally "odds and ends," originally referring to sheep or ox entrails cooked with … never mind.)
• ZH = like English J (as in "Joe Schmoe") (never like French J)
  Example: the Zhou (joe) Dynasty

The Mischievous Letter I

The letter I is sometimes a vowel and sometimes merely a dummy letter to show that the preceding consonant is a full syllable by itself. However, if the letter I is immediately followed by another vowel, it functions as a consonantal Y, but flavors the following vowel. There are only a couple of possibilities here, so they are separately listed below.

• The Letter I as a Dummy Letter
  • I after H or R = like American English R (as in "grr")
    Example: a sense of shame is chi (chrrr)
    Example: the Ri Tan (zhrrrr tahn) or Temple of the Sun
  • I after S, C, or Z = like English Z (as in "bzzzz")
    Example: the Philosopher Laozi (lau-dzzzz)
    Example: the Historial Sima Qian (sss-ma chyen)
• The Letter I in Diphthongs
  • I before a Vowel = like English consonantal Y (as in "yammer").
    When it is the first letter of a syllable, I is spelled Y (One writes yin, not in.)
    When it is the only letter making up a syllable, the syllable is spelled YI (pronounced "ee" as in "eek!").
    Example: The Xia (shya) Dynasty
    But beware of the following syllables:
  • IAN or YAN = like English "yen" (as in ¥) (never rhymes with "John")
    Example: The ancient monster Nian (nyen)
  • IU = like English YO (as in "Yo ho ho") (never like English "you")
• The Letter I as a Real Vowel
  • I elsewhere = like English EE (as in "beet")
    Example: The states of Qi (chee) and Qin (chee-n)
    Example: bin "guest"

The Mischievous Letters U and Ü

In principle the letter U corresponds to the OO in English "boot," and the letter Ü corresponds to the fronted form of this that one hears in French or German. (Arrange your lips to say OO as in "boot" and then try to say EE as in "seek" and you will have the sound.)

HOWEVER, in spelling, the letter Ü can be written without the two dots wherever the normal letter U cannot occur. It turns out that such situations occur most of the time. Only two consonants (L and N) can actually be followed both by U and by Ü. The rest can take onloy onbe of these. Since Ü is written U when a regular U would not be allowed, most of the time you need to know the rule (below) in order to know whether a written U should be pronounced Ü or like our OO.

• The Letter U (no dots)
  • UI = like English "way" (as in "lost his way")
    Example: The Sui (sway) Dynasty
  • U before N = like English W+OO (as in "took" or "book")
    Example: Sunzi (swoon-dz) wrote TheArt of War
  • U elsewhere = like English OO (as in "pooh")
    Example: Confucius lived in the state of Lu (loo)
• The Letter Ü (dots except when they are omitted)
  (Note: Q, J, X, or Y plus N and L are the only letters/sounds after which the sound Ü can occur.)
  • Ü = like French U or German Ü (Arrange your lips to say OO as in “goo” and then try to say EE as in “see.”)
    Example: She was a woman (nü), not a slave (nu).
    (Note: L and N are only letters after which both U and Ü are possible sounds, so the two dots are usually omitted elsewhere.)
  • Ü written without its dots after Q, J, X, or Y (because a real U can never occur there)
    Example: The entry fee was 5 yuan (yüen)
    Example: The Philosopher Xunzi (shün-dzzz.)

Other Vowels

• A after Y, I, or Ü (including Ü when written without its dots) = like the E in "let"
  Example: The entry fee was 5 yuan (yüen)
• A elsewhere = like the A in "father"
  Example: This is Mr. Fan (fahn)
• E after Y = like the E in "let"
• E elsewhere = like English "uh" (as in "uh huh")
  Example: The Yellow River, or Huang He (hwahng huh)
• OU = like English O or OW (as in "oh" and "show")
  (O rarely occurs by itself. When it does it is usually an obsolete spelling for E.)
• ONG = like English OO in "took" plus NG
  Example: Confucius had the surname Kong (koong)
  Example: The Song (soong) Dynasty (NOT pronounced like English "song"!)

When a syllable begins with a vowel, it must be preceded by an apostrophe unless it is (1) free-standing or (2) the first syllable in a compound. For example, the word xian "county" is a single syllable (pronounced shyen). The city of Xi'an is two (shee-ahn), and must not be written without the apostrophe. (It is a sign of an ignorant author or a bad editor to ignore this rule.)

Tones

Tones are pitch patterns. Standard Mandarin has four tones (plus a "neutral" or "negated" tone), and they are just as important as consonants and vowels in telling Chinese syllables apart, but very few authors or editors mark them in Romanized words. Unless you actually take up the study of Chinese, you will be forced to ignore them. However, it is important to realize that some spellings may look alike but not actually be pronounced the same way, since they may vary in tone. (Occasionally confusion results, but few editors make any attempt to avoid it.)

When indicated, tones are traditionally represented in Romanized text by diacritical marks (as on this web site) or (in older texts or Email) by numbers:

1. Macron ("long mark") (ā or a¹) = high, even pitch (first tone)
2. Acute accent (á or a²) = rising pitch (second tone)
3. Caron or breve accent (ǎ or ă or a³) = pitch that falls then rises (third tone)
4. Grave accent (à or a⁴) = dropping pitch (fourth tone)

When tone marks are not used, then in a two cases the spelling is usually —not always— arbitrarily deformed to avoid confusion:

1. The Jìn 晋 dynasty (265-420) is distnguished from the Jīn 金 dynasty (1115-1234) by arbtrarily spelling the second one "Kin." (An earlier conventions in English marked the Jìn as Tsin and the Jīn as Chin, or the earlier as "Ssŭ-ma Chin and the later as Nü-Chên Chin.) Since tones are marked on this web site, this spelling deformation is not observed.)
2. Shānxī 山西 and Shǎnxī 陕西 provinces are distinguished by arbitrarily spelling the second one "Shaanxi." (On this web site, although tones are usually marked, Shǎnxī is spelled Shǎanxī in deference to that custom.)

The Chinese tones are actually categories, not absolute sounds. (Technically that is true of vowels and consonants too. You don't want to know.) In some dialects of Mandarin, the actual pitch patterns of these tones may vary, but the contrasts between one tone category and another remain intact. Although tones in non-Mandarin dialects of Chinese are normally cognate, the number of tones may vary. (Details are available elsewhere on this web site (link), but you really don't want to go there.)

Finally, tone is not the same thing as intonation. Click here for More About Tone & Intonation.)

Now you know.

For more detail, see:

JORDAN, David K.

1971 Guide to the romanization of Chinese. Taipei: Mei Ya Publications.

Return to top.
Print this page.