Pinyin Lesson Series #1_ What is Pinyin & How Does it Help Me Speak Mandarin Chinese_ _ Yoyo Chinese

Hello, nǐ hǎo. Starting from this lesson, we'll learn all about how to pronounce Chinese using pinyin. First, let's talk about what pinyin is. The word pinyin in Chinese literally means spell sounds. It's the most commonly used system for transcribing or spelling out the Chinese sounds. It uses the letters in the Latin alphabet that you are already familiar with. Pinyin is an extremely useful tool and should be the foundation of your Chinese learning. Plus, it's not just for Chinese learners like yourself. Actually, all native Chinese speakers know pinyin. It's the first thing Chinese children learn at school before learning characters. So even if you don't know Chinese characters, you can type pinyin Well, here's some great news for you. In Chinese, we can't easily map out every single sound that exists in the entire language. Why? There are a total of 409 sounds in Chinese. That's why Chinese pronunciation is actually not difficult to master. Hear me out here. Every single sound that exists in Chinese can be displayed easily on a pinyin chart like this. Once you master these 409 sounds along with the tones, then you practically master how to pronounce every single word that exists in the Chinese language. You might be thinking, hmm, 409 is actually a lot. It doesn't sound that easy at all. Well, here's some great news for you. If you know English, you should already know how to correctly pronounce over half of those sounds without any coaching. And for the rest, that's what we're here for. We'll guide you through it all in the coming lessons. There's one thing I need you to keep in mind as you learn pinyin. You cannot pronounce pinyin as if it were English. That might sound obvious to you, but it's something that actually gets new learners in trouble all the time. For example, how do you pronounce this word? Ok, in English it's he, right? Well, in Chinese, he is pronounced as he. I'm assigning a first tone to it, which is represented by that flat mark over the e, he. Well, don't worry about the tones for now. We'll get to it soon. In Chinese, the English letter e is one of the six vowels and it's pronounced as e. It sort of sounds like uh in English, e. So he is pronounced as he instead of he. Let me give you another example. How would you pronounce this word? Does it look like the names of your two friends Ben and Dan? Well, in Chinese, this is pronounced ben dan and it means idiot. It's not ben dan, it's ben dan. So make sure you can say it correctly before you call someone an idiot in Chinese, alright? Part of the task of learning pinyin is training yourself to overcome your instinct to pronounce syllables that look like he in the English way and learn to pronounce them in a new way. Alright, that's all for this lesson. We'll continue next time. Zài jiàn.