NOTES

SUBJECT: CHINESE LANGUAGE

BASICS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Alphabets, Vowels And Personal Pronouns
ALPHABETS

The set of letters is called Alphabets.

There are 26 alphabets in English language. There are five vowels in English alphabets and
remaining 19 are called consonants.

Alphabets Words Phrases Sentences

VOWELS

A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture

in the vocal tract.

There are five vowels in English language.

i.e. a, e, i, o, u
CHARACTERISTICS OF VOWELS

 Vowels are independent.

 They have clear sounds.
 Our mouth organs don’t touch while speaking vowels.
 They are in alphabetic order.
 Every word of English language has a vowel.
i.e., NO VOWELS NO WORDS
BASICS OF CHINESE LANGUAGE
Phonetic Alphabets, Vowels, Semi- Vowels, Consonants, Tones.
 Composition of
Phonetic Alphabets

PHONETIC 6 vowels
ALPHABETS
Chinese alphabets are called
phonetic alphabets.
There are 29 phonetic alphabets.
2 semi vowels

21 consonants
CHINESE VOWELS

Characteristics of Chinese Vowels

There are six vowels in Chinese Language.
 They have independent sound.
i.e. a, o, e, i, u, ü  They have clear sounds.
 Our mouth organs don’t touch while speaking vowels.
 Similar identical letters are not repeated (e.g., seen).
 They are not in alphabetic order.
 One word  One tone
 Tone is put only on vowel letter.
 Tone is put on vowel letter according to their
alphabetic order (exception io, iu).
SEMI VOWELS

There are two semi vowels. Characteristics of Semi-Vowels

Semi vowels cannot make a word itself, they
i.e. W and Y 
depend upon vowels.
 In Chinese language, semi vowels are not
placed at the end of any word.
 They are always written in the start of the
word.
 Mouth organs touches while speaking semi
vowels.
CONSONANTS

There are 21 consonants in Phonetic Alphabets.

 They depend upon vowels and semi-vowels to make clear sounds.
 While speaking consonants mouth organs do touch.
 They do not have their own sound.

Examples:
g r w  no sound g r o w  have sound now
SAME & DIFFERENT SOUNDS

SAME SOUND CONSONANTS DIFFERENT SOUND CONSONANTS

c, f, l, m, n, b, d, g, h, j,
k, p, q, t, v,
r, s, z x, zi, ci, si
 Person Singular Plural

PERSONAL
PRONOUNS Exclusive Inclusive

wǒ
A personal pronoun is a short word 1st person I, me wǒmen zánmen
that we use as simple substitute for we, us we, us
a proper name of person.

Informal Formal
nǐnmen
2nd person you
nǐ nín
you you

tā tāmen
3rd person he/him/she/her/it they, them
UNDERSTANDING CHINESE LANGUAGE

 Zhōng wén
It is used for pronunciation.
 Hàn yǔ
It is used for writing Chinese character.
 Pinyin
Pin means spell and yin means sound, includes the use of LATIN alphabets to write Chinese
language.
TONES

High level, straight and Prolong.

Upper half, slow rise.

First fall and then rise.

Sudden fall.

NEUTRAL Simple and soft.