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please give me the mandarin vowels and consonants together with its meaning and how to write it...thank you...

Asked by Maryjane, on 16/6/11 in Chinese (Mandarin).

Answers to "please give me the mandarin vowels and consonants together with its meaning and how to write it...thank you..."

I'm a bit rusty, but it looks like you've been waiting a while for a response:

b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j/zh (depending on following vowel), q/ch (same), x/sh (same), z, c, s. Also "ng," but it can only occur at the end of a syllable (and "n" can also occur at the end of a syllable; no other vowel can occur in closing position).

a, e, i, o, u, ü (it's like "i" in english but with your lips rounded), and then a bunch of dipthongs... ai, ao, ei, ia, iao, ie, iou, ou, ua, uai, üe, uei, uo.

If you're using pinyin, that's exactly how you write them, unless there is a syllable starting without a consonant an "i," in which case you write it "y," and "u," which is written "w" (or that might be ü, I can't remember exactly).

Hope that helps!

Best,

Kate

Kate
on 25/6/11.

in Mandarin each syllable consists of 3 elements

an "initial" sound

a "final" sound

a "tone"

typically the initial is one of a fixed set of consonant sounds, but can be "empty" - in transcription these are usually a single letter but a few are written with two letters

the final is one of a set of fixed vowel combinations - in transcription these are written with between one and 3 vowels - sometimes there is a final r added

a syllable cannot have more than one initial or more than one final and certain initials only appear betfore certain finals - all possible combinations of initial + final do not actually exist.

the tone is one of 4 tones or can sometimes be an empty tone i.e. no tone is used - this occurs only in polysyllabic words or with some particle function words and in sentences, a single syllable word always will have a tone and must be learned as part of the word. In combination with other words the tones sometimes change in accordance with fixed rules.

Rob
on 15/8/11.

I forgot to mention that some finals also end in -n or -ng

a full explanation of the standard pin-yin transcription system is in the wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

a complete table chart showing all possible Mandarin Chinese syllables

and giving recorded pronunciation of each of them can be found at

http://www.quickmandarin.com/chinesepinyintable/

Rob
on 15/8/11.