Initials and Finals: the Sounds That Will Trip You Up

Initials, finals, and the sounds that will trip you up

A Mandarin syllable is built from an initial (the consonant at the front), a final (everything after it), and a tone laid across the whole thing. There are twenty-one initials and roughly three dozen finals, and every syllable in the language is one of a few hundred permitted combinations. Some syllables have no initial at all: 爱 ài, 我 wǒ, 一 yī — where the letters y and w are spelling devices rather than consonants.

One spelling trap before anything else: after z, c, s, zh, ch, sh and r, the letter i is not the vowel of see. It is a buzz held in the position of the consonant itself. 是 shì, 四 sì, 吃 chī, 十 shí all use it. Everywhere else, i is the ordinary ee: 你 nǐ, 七 qī.

The four groups that cause trouble

zh ch sh r — curl the tip of the tongue up and back toward the roof of the mouth, leave a narrow gap, and push air through. zh is unaspirated, ch is the same shape with a hard puff of air, sh is the matching hiss, and r is sh with the voice switched on. 中国 Zhōngguó, 吃 chī, 老师 lǎoshī, 认识 rènshi.

j q x — the opposite gesture. The tip of the tongue rests against the back of the lower teeth while the body of the tongue rises to the hard palate. j is unaspirated, q is the same shape with a strong puff, x is the hiss. 叫 jiào, 请 qǐng, 谢谢 xièxie. These three occur only before i or ü, which is why you never see ja or ju pronounced with an oo.

ü — the vowel of ee said with the lips rounded tightly. 女 nǚ, 学 xué, 去 qù. After j, q, x and y it is written without its two dots (ju, qu, xu, yu) but is still ü; after n and l the dots are kept and they carry meaning: 女 nǚ is not 奴 nú.

c against s — c is ts with a strong puff of air, z is the same ts without the puff, s is a plain s. 四 sì, 菜 cài, 字 zì. Say the end of cats, then start a syllable with it.

What each language group has to unlearn

English speakers. You will hear zh and j as one sound, ch and q as one sound, sh and x as one sound, and you will produce one sound for each pair. The fix is mechanical: tongue tip up and back for zh ch sh, tongue tip down behind the teeth for j q x. Your r is made with rounded lips and almost no friction, so Mandarin r comes out too soft — keep the lips flat. English never begins a word with ts, so 菜 cài arrives as sài. And English has no ü: say ee, freeze the tongue exactly where it is, then round the lips.

French speakers. Three habits to break. First, your p, t and k are unaspirated and your b, d and g are truly voiced, while Mandarin contrasts puff against no puff — 怕 pà said without a puff of air is simply heard as 爸 bà. Second, French turns a vowel plus n into a nasal vowel, but Mandarin keeps the consonant: 很 hěn must end with a real n at the tooth ridge and 请 qǐng with a real ng at the back of the mouth, because an/ang and en/eng distinguish words. Third, French has no [x], so the h of 好 hǎo and 汉语 Hànyǔ tends to disappear; scrape it like the ch of German Bach. The good news is real: your u in tu is exactly Mandarin ü, so 女 nǚ and 学 xué come free, and your ch and j land close to x and q once you push the tongue forward and stop rounding the lips.

Arabic speakers. Your خ is already the h of 好 hǎo — use it directly, it is one problem you do not have. Three to watch. Most varieties of Arabic have no /p/, so 怕 pà drifts toward 爸 bà; the difference in Mandarin is the puff of air, not voicing. Arabic ر is a tap or a trill, while Mandarin r is held motionless with the tongue curled back — no tapping at all. And Arabic ش is a useful starting point for x only if you keep the lips unrounded and slide the tongue forward, otherwise it lands on sh. Beyond that, Arabic has no [ts], so c and z are built from nothing, and no front rounded vowel, so ü is built exactly the way an English speaker builds it. Last, a Mandarin syllable ends only in a vowel, n, ng or r: resist adding a helping vowel or a glottal stop at the end.