What you will be able to do
- End a syllable in -n or in -ng deliberately, and hear which one a native speaker produced.
- Use the vowel, not only the consonant, to separate an from ang and en from eng.
- Produce ü as a front vowel with rounded lips, and know from the spelling when u means ü.
- Say a lone e without rounding the lips, and restore the hidden vowel of iu, ui and un.
本文中的中文词语都可以激活，查看词典释义。
The three distinctions that decide whether you are understood
-n against -ng
These two endings separate real words, and a listener has no context to fall back on when a single syllable is wrong.
- shān mountain / shāng commerce
- fēn minute / fēng wind
- xīn new / xīng star
- yín silver / yíng to win
- bàn half / bāng to help
- zhēn true / zhēng to contend
Where the tongue is. For -n, the tip of the tongue presses against the ridge just behind the upper teeth and stays there; the mouth is nearly closed at the end. For -ng, the tip touches nothing at all — it floats — and the back of the tongue rises to the soft palate; the mouth stays open.
Say a long ah, then, without moving the tip of your tongue, lift the back until the sound goes out through the nose. That is -ng, and you have just proved that the tip is not involved.
The vowel is the louder clue. In practice, listeners hear an/ang and en/eng as much by the vowel as by the consonant.
- an has a front, bright vowel; ang has a back, dark, more open one. A French speaker can use the contrast between patte and pâte as a starting point.
- en has a short central vowel; eng is backer and slightly rounded.
If your an and ang share one vowel, the nasal alone will not save the distinction.
A trap for French speakers specifically. French turns a vowel plus n into a single nasal vowel and deletes the consonant. Mandarin does no such thing: the vowel stays oral and the nasal consonant is genuinely pronounced at the end. hěn must finish with a tongue tip on the ridge, not with a nasalised hen.
ü against u
Both are rounded. The difference is where the tongue sits, and nothing else.
- u [u] — tongue back, lips rounded: lù, book shū, chū.
- ü [y] — tongue front, in the position of ee, lips rounded: nǚ, lǜ, qù, xué.
Two ways in. If you speak French, you already have ü: it is the u of tu, unchanged. If you do not, say a long ee, freeze the tongue exactly where it is, and round the lips without letting the tongue slide back. The moment the tongue moves back, you have said u.
Pairs to keep: nǔ / nǚ, lù / lǜ, lǔ / lǚ.
Reading the spelling. After j, q, x and y, the letter u is always ü — jū, qù, xū, yú — because those initials cannot take a real u, so no ambiguity is possible and the two dots are dropped. After n and l the dots are written, because both vowels occur there and the pairs above are genuine words. After every other initial, u is u.
The letter e
e is the busiest letter in pinyin, and reading it as one sound is a reliable way to sound foreign.
- e alone is an unrounded back-mid vowel: è, hē, chē, rè, and the neutral de, le. The lips must be flat. A French speaker who produces the vowel of deux has rounded it; an English speaker who produces the vowel of bed has fronted it. Say uh with a completely relaxed mouth and pull the tongue slightly back.
- e in ie and üe is an open front vowel: xiè, xué, yuè.
- e in en, eng and ei is a short central vowel: hěn, lěng, měi.
o alone hardly ever stands by itself: it appears after b, p, m and f — bō, pō, mō — and there it already carries a slight u on-glide. Keep it firmly rounded, and keep e firmly unrounded, and the two will not collide. Say è and ò one after the other in a mirror: only the lips should move.
Three finals that hide a vowel
Pinyin shortens three finals in writing, and the missing vowel comes back in careful or slow speech, and always under a third tone.
- iu is really iou: liù, jiǔ, yǒu. In jiǔ the o is clearly audible.
- ui is really uei: duì, shuǐ, huí. In shuǐ the e is clearly audible.
- un is really uen: chūn, lùn, wèn.
Read them as written and you will produce a syllable that is a little too short and a little too flat. Restore the middle vowel, especially in the third tone, and the word lands.
How to work through it
Freeze the end of the syllableread
Read the first section, then say 很 hěn and stop dead at the end without releasing. The tongue tip should be glued to the ridge. Now say 横 héng and stop: the tip is free and the mouth is open. Repeat until you can feel the difference with your eyes shut.
Six nasal pairsaudio
Listen to 山/商, 分/风, 新/星, 银/赢, 半/帮, 真/争 and answer before the second playing. Then listen again only for the vowel and ignore the ending — you should still be able to tell them apart.
Only the lips movespeaking
In front of a mirror, say 努 nǔ then 女 nǚ. The lips are rounded in both; only the tongue travels forward. Then say 饿 è then 哦 ò: the tongue holds still and only the lips round. Two gestures, cleanly separated.
Eight words chosen for their endingsvocabulary
Four of these end in -n and four in -ng or contain ü. Say each with the ending exaggerated first, then at normal speed. The exaggeration is a scaffold and should be gone within a week.
Put the hidden vowel backspeaking
Say 九 jiǔ, 水 shuǐ and 问 wèn very slowly, letting the middle vowel appear — jiou, shuei, wuen — then speed up until it is only a trace. That trace is what a native syllable contains and a spelled-out one does not.