PinYin Sound Groups

In an earlier post, I described the use of Pīnyīn (拼音). It allows us to enter Chinese characters quickly, using a keyboard that’s designed for Western languages like English.

When you first look at the characters though, you might not realize that there isn’t a random pattern to them, the characters are constructed from particular groups of sounds.

The words are constructed from 声母(Shēngmǔ) or “initials” and 韵母(Yùnmǔ) or “finals”.

The initials come from this list of single characters:

b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, x, z

and this list of double characters:

ch, sh, zh

The finals come from this list of single characters:

a, o, e, i, u, ü 

and this list of double characters:

ai, ei, ao, ou, ui, iu, an, en, in, ün, er

and finally, this list of triple characters:

ang, eng, ing, ong

You’ll find that all words are created from this list of initials and finals.

2019-02-01