Do you want to speak a Chinese that is as low-key as a native speaker? This video has everything you need. I've been speaking for over 10 years, and I've also done a few paid courses.
Now I've put all the essence of these courses into this moment, and I'll share it with you for free. In this video, I'm going to guide you from absolute beginner to mastery of every Mandarin sound, syllable, and tone. And by the end, you'll have everything you need to pronounce Mandarin like a native speaker. This is pretty much it.
perfect for you if you're an absolute beginner or if you're a higher level who just wants to massively upgrade your pronunciation or fix any bad habits you may have. Many of you watching this will be able to apply what you learn and start sounding like and impressing the heck out of native speakers immediately even if you've never learned this language before. We're going to work our way through the entire pinyin chart, this thing that shows every sound of the language, and then in the end I'm going to give you some killer techniques for applying what you learn to rapidly improve your pronunciation.
Please download the PDF in the description below, which also includes an extensive collection of audio files that comes free with this masterclass, so you can practice what you learn and fully acquire everything. Let's get started. First off, here's a real quick introduction to what pinyin actually is. It's the romanized version of Chinese. There are just over 400 different sounding syllables in the entire Mandarin language, and they're all on this sheet here in front of you.
Now, if you add in the tones of Chinese, which we'll get into shortly, there's only 1,200 different sounding syllables in the entire Mandarin language. That may sound like a lot, but it's nothing compared to English. Apparently, English has over 10,000 different sounding syllables in the language, which is far more complicated.
So, yes, Chinese in some ways is harder when it comes to, say, the writing system, or at least longer. We have many easy ways to overcome characters, but that's for another video. The...
easy part of Mandarin, or the short part, is the pronunciation. There's really not that much to learn. Pinyin uses all of the letters of the English alphabet except for V, which is replaced by the umlaut U sound, which we'll of course get into and fully master very shortly. Pinyin is not English, and it's best not to treat it as English, otherwise you could develop some bad habits which can be annoying to fix later. So the spellings that I've listed here are just a handful of the ones that look...
like they're said a certain way, but they are totally said a different way. Pinyin was not made with the purpose of helping us learn Chinese. It was made for the purpose of transcribing names and for helping Chinese children learn Chinese faster. All Chinese kids, when they're in school, will start off with pinyin and then gradually work their way towards learning characters.
And pinyin is not perfect. It's not completely 100% intuitive in certain areas. There are some oddities, like some spelling... weirdness that we're going to get into and completely get used to by the end of this video too. Now, almost all of the 400 or so syllables in Mandarin Chinese have three elements to them.
Initial or 生母, final 韵母 and tone 声调. The only exceptions are this top line of the pinyin chart here, which have no initial, technically speaking, and they are signified by this O with a cross through it. That's actually the physics symbol for null or nothing.
So let's talk about the pinyin initials first. There are 21 of them along the left side of the pinyin chart. And I've categorized them here for you as easy, tougher and problem initials. I put problem in inverted commas because by the end of this video, they're not going to be a problem at all. They're just technically the toughest ones in Mandarin because they technically don't exist in...
English. So they are the most difficult for us English speakers to master. These easy initials, we're not going to really talk about at all, because they're pretty much exactly the same as they are in English. M, F, N, L, S. Very easy. Now these tougher initials are similar to how they would be in English, but with slight nuances to them.
But overall, still super easy. And the problem initials, quote unquote, will take some extra work. and we'll need to master some tongue positions in order to pronounce them like a native speaker. Now onto the finals. There are 38 of them, quite a few more, and they can be split up into three different types.
Simple finals, compound finals, and nasal finals. We're going to master the simple finals first because if you can master these then compound finals and nasal finals just become a walk in the park. Because after all these two are just combinations of the simple finals. So here are the major finals.
A, E, O, I, U and U, the umlaut U. And here are all the simple finals. They just use the individual letters themselves.
And compound finals are just combinations of the six simple finals, as you can see here. And nasal finals are simple or compound finals but with a N or NG sound. And when you say N or NG, it makes you pronounce it through your nose.
That's why it's called nasal finals. Real simple. And the final element to almost every Mandarin syllable is tone.
Now, you've probably heard of tones. You've heard that Chinese is a tonal language. When you first start learning Mandarin, it's super weird if your native language is non-tonal, which is very likely the case.
Tones can be the hardest and most intimidating part about Mandarin Chinese for people, but it really doesn't have to be. Over years of teaching pronunciation to people, I can tell you that tones aren't as tough as they look. It's just a matter of how you approach them. I'm going to teach you some really cool practice methods. to get really good tones real fast at the end of this video.
But before that, I'm going to teach you how to actually approach them and the theory behind tones as a beginner so you can master them individually, then as pairs, and then as groups of tones. So here's the best way to get used to the individual five tones. First, I want to establish what your normal vocal range is when you speak normally and comfortably in your own language. Imagine that these two yellow arrows at the top are the the highest point in your personal vocal range.
So for me, for example, if I said the word, maybe, maybe. Now my voice is relatively deep, but that is my highest range of my particular voice. Maybe. I'm not going to go, maybe, right?
It's just over my point at which I'm comfortable saying anything really. So you find yours, say the word, maybe, as if you're considering something. Maybe.
All right. That's your... highest point in your vocal range. Your Chinese should never go above that vocal range either. These two arrows are your lowest point of your vocal range.
So for example, I might say the sound it's quite low. It's the lowest I would ever really go to speak comfortably in English. So what a lot of learners do when they first get into using tones, they start to almost like sing when they speak, right?
And go above. what they're used to or below what they're used to is they're straining themselves. So I'm going to introduce the tones to you now.
I'm going to try and avoid going above or below your vocal range, just say it in a way that's comfortable to you. That is the key to this. So first, first tone, we call this the singing tone.
And here it is. Ma, ma. You know, so I'm not going, ma.
I'm not trying to go as high as possible. I'm just going the highest point in my personal vocal range that I'm comfortable with. Ma. Ma, maybe. Ma.
I'm not going to add in a bunch of awkward pauses throughout this video. I just want you to repeat along with me. I'm going to go at a steady pace and you can feel free to pause it, replace certain parts. Now, the second tone is what we call the unsure tone because it does kind of sound like how we express that in English. So, for example, huh, that's pretty much the second tone.
Huh, it's quite quick and it goes from around about your middle range to the highest point in your vocal range. Huh? Ma, ma.
Now the full third tone sounds something like this. Ma, ma. So it goes down, ma, with a little croak, and then back up again. Ma, almost goes back up as high as the first tone, but not quite.
But the fact that I said that, please don't obsess over that and be like, oh, was mine almost as high as my first tone? Oh, was it above or below my vocal range? Maybe it was 80% towards. Do not obsess over the tones at this early stage. There's no point.
We want to just get a foundational understanding of them. And really, your tones will be mastered by lots of listening and lots of repeating, lots of practice. Now, most Chinese teachers that I've come across in my over a decade teaching this language and learning this language, they will teach it like this.
This is the third tone, they will say. But actually, this form of the third tone is very rare overall. You only use this when you're saying an individual syllable on its own without any other characters or syllables around it, which is very rare, right? So, ma is horse in Chinese, ma, but you're rarely going to say it like that because you don't just go around saying horse, right?
Usually what you'll do is say a horse, yi pi ma, right? And that's when you would say the other. third tone in probably 95% or more of situations.
Here is that other third tone, the far more common version of the third tone, which we call the zombie tone, something like this. Ma ma so it goes down croak and then just dies off. It doesn't do anything else It's quite short and it's at the lowest point of your vocal range ma not more Alright, I'm trying to push it down just ma. That's why we call it the zombie tone It's almost like a zombie saying brains Brains ma ma and finally we've got the fourth tone, which is something like this ma ma I would say it goes even slightly above first tone, but definitely at the limit of your vocal range, and then straight down.
And we call this the assertive tone, because for me, it sounds like you're telling a dog off or saying no to a dog. No. Now, finally, we have the fifth tone.
Now, some people say it's not technically a tone. Some people call it fifth tone. Some people call it neutral tone.
I don't care, because this tone does exist, and therefore, we should learn it. Okay, so the fifth tone is very short. It's something like this.
But here's the thing, it can be low, or it can be high, or it could be somewhere in the middle. And whether it's high or low or somewhere in the middle depends on context. But what we have noticed about the fifth tone is it tends to be contrarian.
It tends to be opposite of what precedes it. So if what precedes the fifth tone... is a low tone, such as the third tone, ma, ma, then fifth tone after it will be usually a high version of itself, ma, ma, ma, and vice versa.
If what precedes the fifth tone is high, like the first tone, for example, then fifth tone will be lower, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, like that. But again, I don't want you to obsess about where the fifth tone is or any of these tones right now. Just like with grammar, you cannot consciously study grammar and then just expect to speak perfect Chinese or any language. You cannot study the theory of pronunciation alone and then just have perfect pronunciation. We must practice.
It's like 5% theory and 95% practice, but that 5% theory is really important, but it's not going to take you to where you want to go. That's why throughout this entire masterclass, I'm going to be practicing primarily with you. based on what we've already learned and gradually building up our knowledge, but also introducing that little bit of key theory that will help you click with what you're learning.
And that's why I've included audio files and a PDF with this so you can actually practice after you're finished watching. Now that we've got to grips with the basics of the individual tones, let's look at tone pairs. This is a really useful exercise that's going to level up your pronunciation quickly.
So we've already established that there are five tones, right? Well, These five tones can combine with each other to make 19 possible tone pairs. And there's 20 blocks here, but there's only 19 separate pairs. And that's because of a rule in Chinese where you cannot have two third tones together. So you can see here, second tone, third tone and third tone, third tone are the same.
Now, I'm not going to go through this with you right now, because first we need to master all of the syllables, the initials and the finals before we can effectively say out loud what we're looking at here. But just be aware that this tone pair chart is available along with your downloads in the description. And we've got audio files for each one of these tone pairs as well, which you can practice along with.
I would recommend that you practice these out loud at least once or twice a day, and that will help you grasp these tone pairs. And the next step after you've grasped tone pairs is to just say entire sentences, entire phrases, groups of tones together, and then... you're off to the races.
All right, so that's your introduction done. Those are initials, finals, and tones. Now let's jump into the simple finals. And at the same time as mastering all of them, all six of them in a row, we're going to master every single initial as well.
So here are the six simple finals. Let's jump into A. Now technically, there are three different pronunciations of A in Chinese. But in terms of just a simple final, just the A by itself, not combined with any other... finals or n or ng it's always pronounced ah like cat that's how i say cat remember as a british person with my british accent cat but if you're american don't say cat don't say air right it's it's uh it's ah ah sorry american listeners i love you guys but i couldn't think of an american version of this i was really trying but it just works so well with the british accent mandarin chinese i don't know why There's a few examples of this.
Now there are two other pronunciations of a in Chinese, but we'll get to that when we get to the compound and nasal finals later on in the video. So here's a great word in Chinese that uses a simple final a, ma ma. Ma-ma. So we have a first tone and a fifth tone. Ma-ma.
And you notice that the contrarian fifth tone is coming in there. It's low because ma is high. Ma-ma. Ma-ma. What about father or dad?
Ba-ba. Ba-ba. So we've got the fourth tone, ba, with the fifth tone at the end. Ba-ba.
This is really common with family member names, by the way. The characters are doubled up and the second one is a fifth tone. Ba ba. He, she or it in Chinese are pronounced exactly the same, but they have different Chinese characters. Pa, pa.
Afraid in Chinese. Pa, pa. Another fourth tone there to practice.
Spicy. La, la. And finally, question mark in Chinese. Ma, just a fifth tone.
Ma. This makes a statement into a yes, no question. Just add it on the end. We would never do that on its own, by the way.
So let's look at an example sentence and practice some tones in combination at the same time. He is afraid of spicy. So is he afraid of spicy food?
Now, this is not literally, are you afraid of it? It's just a way of asking, does he not like spicy food? Can you handle it, basically?
And it's very common where I spent a lot of years in China, Chengdu. because Chengdu is in Sichuan and Sichuan is famous for spicy food. And in Chinese, when we answer a yes-no question, we don't really have a word for yes or no. We just repeat the pertinent piece of information back.
The important word here is afraid, pa. So we just repeat that back. Pa.
Yes, he doesn't like spicy food. Ta pa la ma pa. So ta pa. We've got a nice sort of first tone, fourth tone combination there. So that's the simple final A done.
Now let's move on to the simple final e. Now e overall in the entire language has also three different pronunciations. And you'll notice that e as a simple final with one of the first four tones is pronounced one way, but with a fifth tone it's also pronounced a different way.
But they're only slightly different. Let me show you what I mean. Hungry in Chinese is e.
So it's like the e in put and the e. in d combined together. So you notice that the sound, 99% of it comes from the throat. I'm not really moving my mouth at all. It's just kind of, it's barely moving.
It's almost like a ventriloquist dummy operator. It's slightly moving a little bit, but it's incidental. So how would you say he's hungry?
Now, usually we would add a l on the end. Ta 饿了. And this 了, this character here, it indicates two things, change or completion.
So he wasn't hungry, and now he is. It's a change of state. So ta 饿了.
Ta 饿了. So this 了 pronunciation with a fifth tone, it's just the first half. of the previous ɜ, just without the ɜ on the end.
So it's just the ɜ, ɜ, ɜ, ɜ, ɜ, ɜ, ɜ, ɜ. He's hungry. It's really common with learners just starting to learn this language to overdo it, not just with this pronunciation, but with many different pronunciations.
I did this myself. Just using lips where you don't need to like ɜ, you know, or a jaw moving like ɜ, you know, like try not to overdo it. Try and imitate me exactly and Just try and relax your mouth throughout all this.
It's going to be easier said than done, of course, and it's going to take some practice. But just try and consciously keep everything relaxed as you practice throughout this entire video. Another good word for the simple final E is 可. It's going to help us practice that third tone, that zombie tone as well.
可. So how would you think he would say, she's thirsty? 他渴了. So you have the zombie tone, 可, and then the high fifth tone because it's the opposite. It's a contrarian, right?
可了. 他可了. And while we're here practicing 义, let's build up our vocabulary a little bit more so we have more example sentences to work with. And let's introduce another family member name, which is older brother. 哥哥.
哥哥. So we have the two different 义's here again, the long one and the short one. 哥哥.
And we can add in the most common Chinese character in existence. 德. It has a bunch of different usages. And this is not a grammar video, so I'm not going to spend 10 minutes explaining how it works.
But essentially what it does here is it makes he, she, or it. His, hers, or its. It makes it possessive.
So,他的. Again, 的 is low, 他 is high.他的. Now, how do you think he would say his or her older brother is hungry? 他的哥哥饿了。
How would you make this into a yes-no question? 他的哥哥饿了吗? Another particle that we could add on to the end of a statement is n with that fifth tone e. And it means what about.
What about the previous thing I just said? So mama means what about mum? All right. So that is the simple final e done.
And before we move on to the o, we've now covered lots of the tougher initials. So I want to just go over them all right now and show you the subtle differences between the tougher initials. in Chinese and their English counterparts. So once again, there are easy initials, tougher initials and problem initials. The easy initials are already done because they're the same as English.
Let's talk about the tougher initials. So let's start off with B, D and G. B, D and G are unvoiced in Chinese. There's no voice behind them. Whereas They are voiced in English.
Let me show you what I mean. So, in Chinese is more like the P in spit. It doesn't have a behind it like it would have in English. Bit.
Just a bit. There's a vibration going on all the way through the sound. Whereas, with Chinese there isn't. It's like a more of a poppy sort of sound.
D in Chinese is more like the T in the English word store, store. It's not heavily voiced like in English. Door, door, door. You got the vibration there. The G in Chinese is more like the K in the English word skill.
It's more like a, it's not heavy in voice like gill, gill. G, g, g, g. It's very light.
So if you want to say these three letters B, D and G in Chinese perfectly. Just imagine you're doing a very gentle version of beatboxing. It's more like that than it is the b, d, g. Next up, let's look at t, p, and k. T, p, and k in Chinese are much more heavily aspirated.
They have more air behind them, and they are lightly aspirated in English. Let me show you what I mean. So the Chinese for he, she, or it is ta, ta.
Whereas the English word tap, tap is a bit more gentle. And you can actually put your hand in front of your mouth here. Ta, ta and tap, tap.
And you can notice there's a different amount of air hitting your hand. Same with the Chinese for afraid of. Pa, pa versus the English pat, pat, pa, pat or ke. You can hear that breath coming out. Ke.
versus kit. Ke, ke, kit. And finally, we've got the H, which is rather unique.
So the H in Chinese is kind of like how I hear Scottish people say loch, loch. They've got a slight scratch to it. So for example, ke, ke, ke, which is drink in Chinese. Ke.
All right, that's it. That's the tougher initials covered. Now let's get back to our simple finals. We've done A and E.
Now let's move on to O. Now, thankfully, the remaining simple vinyls are nowhere near as multivaried as A and E. O, I, U and U are much more straightforward.
So O just has one pronunciation and it is exactly how I in my British accent would say awesome, right? Sorry, Americans, I apologize. I tried hard to think of an American version for this. I just couldn't. Sorry.
So you'll just have to do a British accent. Say awesome. Master that first.
and then you'll master the Mandarin version. Now, this is your first pinyin oddity, because technically, when you see these spellings with just B-O-P-O-M-O-F-O in the pinyin chart, they are technically in the O, simple final O section, but they're not pronounced that way. They're pronounced U-O, and we'll cover that in just a moment.
Let's look at the simple final first. It's just pronounced O, and... The only Chinese character that you'll get if you just type in 喔 by itself into your dictionary will be this one. It's just the word for 喔 in Mandarin. And aside from the B-O-P-O-M-O-F-O that I just pointed out, there's also L-O, which does actually have the original O pronunciation, which is lo, lo.
And it's a particle that you put on the end of something to sort of show enthusiasm or happiness about something. Just for example, it's raining. So instead of just saying it's now raining, you say it's raining.
So that's just that's it. That's how lo is used. So that's the basic. sound. But as I mentioned, when it's B-O-P-O-M-O-F-O, it is pronounced with a U sound.
And we haven't covered U yet. So let's skip ahead, quickly cover that because it's really easy anyway, and then we'll come back. So the U sound in Chinese is pronounced quite similarly to how I say the word cool, the double O in English. But when by itself, this sound, it's spelled W-U.
And this is another one of those pinyin oddities that we have to just get used to. So if you look at the top of the pinyin chart here, you can see all of the W sounds or the U sounds. So these are technically sounds that do not have an initial. And I guess the person who made pinyin thought, it's kind of weird to have like just a word starting with U, like a bunch of Chinese words just starting with a U. So he chose W to go in front.
So if you see here, the U in Chinese just by itself, the simple final U is spelt W U. And all of the sounds to the right here should technically be spelt U A or U O or U E I, but they weren't. The U here was replaced with a W. And I think it was just because to make them look less weird. This phenomenon happens with the i, the u and the umlaut u. And we'll get to those in just a moment.
So u is pronounced u, u like cool. That's so cool. And funnily enough, the word for cool in Chinese is a transliteration, just essentially a Chinese sound that's mimicking the original English version of cool.
It is cool with a fourth tone. 苦. Five in Chinese is You notice that it's by itself, so I'm saying the full third tone. Most of the time, however, in reality, it would be just the zombie tone. So now that we're done with the U, let's go back to O and finish that one off.
So if you look at the pinyin chart, all these four sounds, although they're spelt with just an O, I want you to imagine that they're spelt U-O. Here they are. I don't know why.
The guy who made pinyin didn't just put them over here in the UO section. That would have been way better, in my opinion. But who knows? Maybe he's just smarter than me, and there was a reason why that I can't see. But the fact of the matter is that this is not boh.
This is pronounced boh, oo, oh, wah, boh. This one is pronounced poh, poh. And this one is pronounced... More, more.
And this one, for, for. So let's do a key word, really common word for U-O or W-O. 我,我 means I or me. How do you think you would say I'm hungry?
我饿了. With that short zombie third tone. 我饿了,我饿了. All right, so now we're done with O, A, E, O and U.
All done. Now let's move on to I. The simple final I has one primary pronunciation. And that is exactly like the E-A in T-E-E.
Now there is also the fake I. It's another pinyin oddity, something that can really confuse people. But you're not going to be one of those people because I'm going to explain it all before you get the chance to be confused. So let's jump into the primary pronunciation first and master that. Now, when E or I...
is by itself, just like with the U pronunciation, the simple final there, it has a slightly different spelling. When it's on its own, just that E pronunciation, it's spelt Y-I. Still pronounced the same, these two things, just spelt differently. So again, just like the U's in this section were replaced with W's at the beginning, this section all replaced with Y's. And by itself, as you can see here.
It's spelled Y-I. These two are pronounced. identically. They are the same thing.
So the most common word with the pronunciation yi is number one in Chinese. Yi. And it can also mean er or an depending on the context. Yu in Chinese is ni or nii if you're just saying it by itself.
Ni. How would you ask, are you hungry? Ni er lemme? Ni er lemme?
Now that we're onto this I sound, we are ready to master the rest of the initials, the problem initials, technically the most difficult sounds in the entirety of the Mandarin language. But do not worry, there are some very simple ways of saying these like a native speaker with minimal effort. So all of these problem initials combine with the simple final I.
And I've divided them up into three different categories of tongue position. So there are three different tongue positions to master all of the most difficult sounds of Chinese. These four here, the tongue is at the roof of the mouth. With these two here, the tongue is behind the centre teeth.
And with these three here, the tongue is by the bottom teeth or behind the bottom teeth. Let's look at these three first because they relate to the real or primary I sound, the E sound. So in order to say these perfectly, these three sounds, J-I, Q-I and X-I in Chinese, all you have to do is put your tip of your tongue behind your bottom teeth.
like this. So it's almost like giving yourself a kind of speech impediment here. If you do that, you'll be able to say these sounds perfectly.
So while you are keeping your tongue there, say the sound G, as in gee whiz, or, you know, the letter G. Now try saying the word chi, as in the first part of the word cheese. Now try as in female, So let's use the word how many to master the J-I. 几个.
So remember, keep that tongue there. It's going to be weird. You're going to want to move it around.
When we speak English, our tongues tend to move around a lot throughout syllables, whereas in Chinese, one of the things I've noticed is that they tend to... stay still and fixed throughout the entire sound. So 几个, there's that third tone, fifth tone combination again. 几个. 几 actually means how many and 个 isn't translated because it's a measure word.
We don't have measure words in English, but in Chinese you do. So before you say how many of anything or ask how many of anything, you have to put the measure word before the thing. You'll probably see that shortly. And we can use another number to get used to QI in Chinese, which is So again, keep your tongue fixed there throughout the entire sound, behind your bottom teeth.
And it's like a tire has been popped and then air is quickly escaping. 七个. High, low.
First tone, fifth tone. 七个. Next we have soft.
Gentle. Air is just continuously flowing the entire time at the same speed. It's not explosive like the QI.
Xi. And this is the surname of the current leader of China, President Xi. So that is J, Q and X. Don't worry, we're going to get the chance to practice them a lot more throughout the rest of this video. Let's move on to the next group of problem initials while we're here and also introduce the fake I.
So for all of these pronunciations, Z-I, C-I, S-I, Z-H-I, C-H-I, S-H-I, R-I. So for all of these different sounds here, I call them the fake eye because they have an eye, but really it's just a placeholder. They don't technically have any final at all. The fake eyes are right here. And I want to highlight them here and call them fake and call them out and say, hey, you're a phony.
You're not real because I don't want you to end up. getting confused and trying to pronounce them with the sound. So let's first jump into Z, H, C, H, S, H and R. So the tongue position to pronounce all these is very similar to that of garage.
That garage. Very similar. In fact, you might be exactly the same. You might need to move your tongue slightly further back, slightly further up, but roughly here.
And it's a glottal stop. And really my favorite way of explaining all four of these is just to Delete the I out of your mind. Forget that the I exists.
Instead, replace each I with three Rs. And then the last one, which many people tell me is the hardest sound in Chinese. It's actually easier than all of these other three because there's no ch or ch.
You just, it's just a, just the sound. That's it. The only thing that makes it hard is the mental idea of saying a sound like this and it meaning anything from. an English speaker's perspective.
So let's practice the Z-H-I with the word to point in Chinese, which is a third tone, zh, or zh, zh, but most commonly, zh, zh, to point. So this Z-H is just like a G. Next is to eat with the first tone. Remember, forget this I exists. Just think of it as three R's.
What about to be in Chinese? Another incredibly common character. A common way of showing agreement in Chinese is How do you think he would say, I am her father? And finally, let's move on to the R-I sound. It's so weird at first, I know.
Just to say that, yes, that is a sound that exists that does mean things. Remember, you're just saying this. And it means day.
It's like the formal way of saying day in Chinese. To ask the date. 几日?
几日? People struggle with this a lot because, first of all, they struggle with the R and they don't know the difference between R-I and R-E. It's confusing. But now you know that the R is super easy and it's just a R sound.
Just add hungry on the end. And now you've got hot in Chinese. So that's zhi Now let's move on to the final problem initials Z and C.
This is how you pronounce them. You put your tongue behind your top teeth or maybe around the middle. For me, it's behind my top teeth. But, you know, I've got pretty big top teeth, so maybe it's different for you.
But this is how you pronounce them. The Z-I is just like the D-S in kids. So maybe you can try saying kids.
There's like two separate syllables. Kids. zi ki zi that is the zed i again the i does not exist it's just that z sound but it is somewhat explosive you're like building up the pressure slightly with your tongue your tongue sort of blocking the airway a little bit and then it explodes out not necessarily that violently i'm just showing you for effect so is CI.
Again, forget that I exists, it's just a C sound. So it's like the TS in cats, but it has a voice that comes in after the initial sound. So it's .
So there's an explosion of air, again, very similar to . Except has a voice behind it from the beginning. Alright, so ZI is .
but ci has no voice there's like an explosion of air like almost like a tire being popped and then the voice comes in afterwards like that and si is not a problem initial but it's still kind of weird so i put it here because it still has that sort of buzzy sound at the end so it's more like a s z sound. s, s, like that. So let's quickly practice these.
hàn zì, hàn zì is Chinese character in Chinese. hàn zì, word in Chinese is s, s, so the tone for the ci doesn't exist until that sound comes in. s, s, and then we have four. Si. Si.
And guess what? We have now, I wouldn't say mastered, because true mastery comes with lots and lots of practice, but we have got to grips with... all of the initials and the most difficult sounds in the entire Mandarin language. So congratulations. And we've also covered simple final I.
That is now done. But before we move on to the final, pinyin final, I want to introduce the concept of tone sandy or tone change rules. And the reason why is because we've now covered all of the words that apply to tone sandy.
So here's what I mean. E, this character E that we've already covered as well as 布 with the 乌 pronunciation and third tone. These three things, 布 and third tone, they carry with them tone sandy.
So in certain situations or certain contexts, tones will change. And this is another thing about Chinese that can seem super intimidating. It's like, there's tones, that's hard enough, but now tones change based on context. Ah, it can be overwhelming at first, but don't worry. There's just a few simple rules.
And again, Theory is just a small part of it. Once you actually start practicing with the language, listening, repeating, you will naturally just get this. Okay, so let's jump into bù first because it is the easiest. So bù is inherently a fourth tone, but when it precedes another fourth tone, it becomes a second tone.
So it's not bù huì. Huì is another fourth tone word that means know how to. If you want to say I don't know how to do something, you say bù huì.
with a second tone. If you want to say something is not the case, you don't say You say And 要 is to want in Chinese. You don't say You say And that's it.
This is not a rule that was created that Chinese people follow. It was something that people noticed about what Chinese people already do. And Chinese people already do this. because it makes the language flow naturally better.
So that's 部 taken care of. 部 is really straightforward. is still straightforward, but it just has a few more rules to it.
So is the number one in Chinese, or a or an, depending on the context. So whenever is a number one, it is pronounced first time. But in all other situations, it's pronounced different. So when it's number one, as in usually the numeral one, so for example, numerals. Yī bǎi lǐng yī, so that's one hundred, zero, one.
Yī bǎi lǐng yī is one oh one. Zhōu yī is Monday, literally week one, week number one. And then yī yuè, one month. Yī yuè is January. So in all these situations, yī is pronounced yī with a first tone.
As well as dì yī, first. Dì, this character signifies ordinal numbers like this. So, dì yī first.
Now, before a fourth tone, just like with bù, yī becomes a second tone. And again, this makes the language flow better. So, yī ge means a or one of something. It's actually pronounced yī ge. Or sometimes in this case, the ge is pronounced as a fifth tone, so it's yī ge, depending on where it is, how fast you're speaking and all that sort of stuff.
Yī xià. Xià is a fourth tone. So, yī is actually yī in this case.
Yī xià. or one half, 一半, right, just like 步. And the final rule for is that before a first, second, or third tone, it becomes a fourth tone. So, very common word in Chinese meaning together.
You'll see it written like this, 一起, but actually it's 一起. Same with this one. It's not 一点, it's 一点. It's not 一些, it's 一些, 一些. And finally, we have the third tone.
And I talked about this in the tone pairs section. So when followed by another third tone, the first third tone becomes a second tone. It's never... In fact, you can't even really do it. I can't even...
How would you say two zombie tones in front of each other? It's just like so strained and weird. The language does not flow at all when you do that.
So this is not a thing you have to consciously like, oh, am I doing the tone, Sandy? As long as you just imitate what you hear, generally speaking, you'll be fine. So, 你好, 你好.
And that's why often when you just say 你好 in the right way, it's actually quite easy to mess it up, right? 你好. It's a very basic word, very common word, but that's often why you say 你好. Chinese people are like, wow, your Chinese is really good.
You're making fun of me. I just said the word hello. No, if you get this right, it can be quite impressive, right? 你好,你好,很好。 Or, which could mean a long time, or depending on the characters, could mean good alcohol.
So that is tone-sandy. So please be aware of that. Put that in the back of your mind. And let's continue on to the final, simple final. The closest word in English to this pronunciation is, I guess, new.
But really, there is no yu in English. There isn't. sound in Swedish and German and maybe some other languages, but I know for sure it's in Swedish and German.
One thing to notice about this particular sound is that your tongue tip is in the same position as it would be for J-I, Q-I and X-I. For T-I and C-I, just behind your bottom teeth here. U and slightly pursed lips. Oh, and don't move your lips.
Don't go N-U, N-U, like you're saying the word new. Please don't do that. And I hope this example doesn't throw you off. It's just fixed.
Oh, and this one also is the third and final one that has these little spelling differences. So when it's by itself, you is written as why you. So just as with the E and the all pronunciations, the I and the U, the U also has this odd spelling thing.
So when it's just the U by itself, it's spelled. y u and these other three pronunciations here instead of just being the u with the two dots the umlaut u at the beginning on its own which will be a little bit weird to look at it has y u instead and remember it's u so all of these pronunciations here including these and these will have the tongue behind the bottom teeth when you pronounce them okay so here's a really good word with just the yu by itself. Yu, yu, fish.
Second tone, tongue behind the teeth. Yu, yu. Put a q in front of it, a t sound.
Tongue behind the bottom teeth. And you've got go in Chinese with a fourth tone. Qu, qu. How would you ask, are you going?
Ni qu bu qu? Now this is a new... sort of way of asking questions in Chinese where you add the 步 but with a fifth tone, a neutral tone in the middle and you double it up 去 or 去. And that's exactly the same thing as asking 吗 with the question mark 吗 at the end. It's the same thing, it's just a different way of doing it.
You 去不去 it. Although I would say asking questions in this way with the doubling up, it's like literally it's Go, not go. It's like, are you going or not?
It's a little bit more direct and abrupt. So are you going or aren't you? Come on, we're off. 是不是?
Is it so? Is that the case? 是不是? 是不是?
Not 是不是? It's 是不是? Like with a b, b, a really quick fifth tone in the middle. All right, so now, congratulations, you've got to grips with the six simple finals. These are the key building blocks along with the tones for all of the finals.
and of course we've got the initials down as well. So now we just need to focus on the compound and nasal finals. Simple finals, tick, done.
Many of you will be able to pronounce these like a native right away, right now, just with the little bit of training that you've already got here. Don't worry if you can't or your pronunciation is nowhere near perfect, by the way, never needs to be perfect. Accurate is fine, but even if it's not quite accurate pronunciation yet, you will improve over time with practice. And again, We're going to talk about that towards the end of the video. Now let's move on to the compound and nasal finals and we're going to tackle these together.
First let's tackle the A compound and nasal finals. And that is these four pronunciations left in the A column of the pinyin chart. First off we have AU which is just A plus O.
And here's a word that uses the AU pronunciation. 澳, 地, 利 is Austria. Put an H in front of it and you've got good or okay in Chinese. 好 or 好 if you were going to say it on its own, which with this particular word, quite often you do.
好, someone makes a suggestion, say, hey, let's do this thing. You might just say 好. And of course, put a U in front of that and you've got hello in Chinese.
You good. 你好. Remember the third tone.
Third tone rule. This tone becomes a second tone. 你好. 你好.
What about to know in Chinese? 知道。 I love this. It's one of my favorite tone combinations. It's like car driving off a cliff.
So it's I know. Oh, and here's a common thing that people say in China. Like, roger that.
It's not very common in English. I guess in English, we might say, well, roger that technically, but who says that anymore? We might say gotcha or no problem, right? But in China, it's very common to say 知道了 when someone gives you a piece of information.
The 了 is like a change or a change in state or completion, right? So I didn't know that thing. Now I know it.
It's just like a way of confirming to someone. 知道了. Got it. So that's 啊 done.
Let's move on to 哎. So that's 啊 and 哎, 哎, 哎. And just like with 啊, you'll always see the tone mark, whether that's first tone, second tone, third tone or fourth tone.
you'll see it on top of the A. And apparently, this is what I was told when I was learning Chinese, that it's because the A is the one that's slightly elongated. So whichever is the longest vowel in the compound sort of combo, that is the one with the tone marker. The best word to learn for the AI pronunciation, just that AI on its own, would be love. I love you would be 我爱你.
我爱你. And how would you say I don't love you? 我不爱你.
Remember, we would change this to a in reality. But I'm not going to signify that here. We don't do that in Mandarin Blueprint.
We don't rewrite the tones to make things clearer for learners. And we used to do this, but we stopped doing it. And I don't know, some tutors do it absolutely fine. I don't think it's like a bad thing to do necessarily.
But let me explain why we don't do it. So one of our key principles is to, sure, make Chinese simple and rewarding. That's our key mission. in life.
That's why we exist. But part of that is preparing you for the real world, right? I don't want to teach you one way and sort of make you nice and secure and like, oh, this is nice.
This is easy when you're learning from us. But when then you go into the real world, you see it in a different way and you either feel silly or you feel dumb or, you know, you make mistakes, right? So pinyin in the real world is like this.
It doesn't show you the tone marks. So I don't want to show you the tone marks either. I just want you to get used to it. And it's not that many rules to get used to. I think, we think, that overall, this is the best approach long-term.
And we at Mandarin Blueprint, we're all about long-term success with this language. So just remember to watch out for that. It's actually bu ai.
This is a good chance for you to practice the third, second tone pair, which I think is one of the hardest ones. Wo bu. Wo bu ai ni.
Wo bu ai ni. Another good word with the i pronunciation is zài, which means, well, located, I guess. The closest thing is, I guess, at, on, in. Problem is, zài, the way it's used in Chinese, isn't really used in English in the same way, or it doesn't really exist in English.
And I'll show you what I mean. So, zài nǎ lǐ is where. Well, technically, nǎ lǐ on its own is where to, but usually when you're saying where, you want to say where is something.
So you would add the thing in the front here, the thing that you want to know where it is, you would add it here. So car, for example, 车在哪里? Where is the car? You could say 车在这里.
It's located here. But again, we don't say located here in English. We don't use that 在, it's just a Chinese thing.
And if it's unclear right now, it will become clear very soon. We've got a few more examples with dai coming up. So that's ai sorted.
Now let's go to an. And this is a nasal final. A plus n. Really simple.
An. And by the way, why do I always do the first tone when I introduce these things? I see the first tone as like a really clear, solid tone. Whereas an or an. Like third tone or an.
An is kind of okay too, but I just like the first tone because it's consistent. It's a consistent sound. It's like a deep sound. That's why I and most Chinese teachers, when they teach your pronunciations, they'll introduce them as first tone. So just in case you were wondering.
An. But if you say it with a fourth tone, it becomes dark. An.
An. Man in Chinese means slow. Man. Man. And hao.
The word for good in Chinese actually can be translated as very. You can put it before an adjective, like a describing word like slow, and it becomes very slow. So he is slow or he is very slow. 他好慢 Three in Chinese is san, san-guh. Again, we've got the, what we call the universal measure word here, guh.
There are different measure words for different objects, but guh is the universal measure word. So if when you're just starting out, you can just use guh for everything. And if you can't remember in the likely situation that you can't remember, oh, what measure word goes for this type of object, just say guh.
Now the final A final is unh, and that is pronounced differently, as you probably just heard. So, it's pronounced more like, again, sorry, how British people, how I would say the word father. It's pretty close to that, right?
So, just add an NG on the end, as you would in English. And there's really not any common words in Chinese with just this pronunciation. So, I chose to share with you Henry in Chinese, which is Just remember, when you're saying this Ong sound, the The cat A that we've covered so far is more like a smile. It's like ah, ah. The corners of your mouth are going outwards, whereas ang is more of a relaxed.
Your jaw is sort of opening down and your jaws here are kind of relaxed. Ang, ang, ang li. So this is how English names are transcribed or transliterated.
I can't remember which one of those words is correct. But Jonathan, for example, is Yue Han. John or Jonathan. 约汉. Luke could be a couple of different things.
陆克 with two fourth tones or 陆克. Fourth tone, third tone. I met a guy called 陆克.
And some of my hilarious northern Chinese friends would refer to me as 卢克, which is a very different meaning that only native speakers will get and likely find funny. Next, 帮我. So put a B in front of 帮 and you've got help in Chinese.
帮. 帮, 帮我 is help me. That's it.
We are now done with A, like fully done. All the A pronunciations are finished. Now, we haven't gone through every single A pronunciation in the entire pinyin chart, but because you have got to grips with all of the initials and all of the finals in the A column, you can now say you have all of the building blocks. You are now equipped to say any of the A. pronunciations.
Now let's move on to e. Here they are. There are another four we're going to cover here. Let's get started with a, a.
So in this situation, the e here is pronounced like the e in ten. Eh, eh. And the i is just pronounced like i. E. So it's a, a.
Just like the word vein in English. And really, there aren't many words in Chinese with this particular E-I-A pronunciation alone, except for these kind of particles. So A with the second tone is like, what? Like A? Like if you walk into a room and something confusing is happening, it's like A?
That's just how you express that in Chinese. Now, if you said it with a fourth tone, A, that's when someone calls your name and you want to express that, yes, I'm here. I hear you. I'm here. What do you need?
Kind of thing. You're responding to someone when they call for you. A, A. Super common.
Now put a zh in front of a and you've got j or jæg, which means this. Well, technically it's this one. Now you could say it jæg, jæg, with the full simple final e there. And it would mean exactly the same thing. And it has exactly the same characters here.
But if you say j, it's just more of a spoken way of saying it. Not that jæg is formal. but it's just 这 is the more casual version. So 这个 and 这个, same logic applies to that in Chinese.
那个, 那个 or 那个, 那个. Again, same logic. 那个 is absolutely fine, but 那个 is just slightly more casual, more of a spoken twang to it. 那个 is also like a way of saying, let me think. kind of like a way of filling, or they call it filler words in Chinese, right?
So you can say, as you're thinking of something to say, you can be like, 呢个, 呢个. It's like saying, uh, and it gives you some time. But I really like using it because often if you're speaking Chinese and you're going, um, um, using your sort of native way of saying, uh, or um, Chinese people might feel awkward and they're like, oh, I'll interrupt him or her.
and I'll relieve him or her of his or her awkwardness here. And you might just want some extra time to get your thoughts together and say the words out loud. But if you say like the Chinese um or ah, like you say nèi ge, nèi ge, then what tends to happen is that they will give you that extra time, just like they would for a native speaker. Just a little tip for you.
While we're here, we might as well cover the word for witch in Chinese, which is nèi ge. So it's like neige, which is that, but with a third tone. Neige, neige. Or nag, nag.
Same logic applied there too. So that's A. Let's go on to N, N. And in this case, the best way to pronounce this like a native is to know that the E here is just like the fifth tone, uh, uh, sound, the U in... put just with an n on the end.
Now, a fourth tone would be to press down on something. Put a b in front of it and you've got stupid. So, again, this is a really short e. In fact, it's kind of like the b-a-n in banana, the way we say that. Banana, banana.
Really quick and really short with the fourth tone. Two really important characters. Plural for people.
我们. So 我 is I. 我们 is we. 他 is he, she or it. And 他们 is they.
And for this, the character is the male. 他. 他们. This is another one that's super common.
I mean, all the words I'm covering today are super common, but this is like super, super common. So 很. So technically, the main meaning of 很 is very.
But when it's used in front of most adjectives, it actually is so light in meaning. It's more like just is. So for example, 他们很笨。
It's not they are very stupid. It's just they are stupid. If you wanted to say very here, you would use another word such as 好,好笨, or 非常, or 特别, or 真的很笨, something like that. This is a really good little phrase to master this 恩 pronunciation.
他们很。 But, but, you notice when I said that quickly, here's another little pronunciation tip for you. When I said that quickly, but, this end just disappears, just like it would in English words like government or environment. We just kind of miss out the ends.
I don't know what this is called exactly. If I was an actual linguist, if I'd studied this for years and years, maybe I'll be able to tell you, or if I spent five minutes researching it right now on ChatGVT, but I'm not going to. So this is a common thing.
And again, Don't necessarily need to consciously study this, but just as long as you imitate how native speakers, exactly how they speak, you'll get this naturally anyway. 它们很笨. Oh, and I guess this N disappears too.
它们很笨. Really, the only N you can hear is the final one. Next up, 嗯. So, E pronounced exactly the same way with the 呃, sort of fifth tone E pronunciation of put with an NG on the end. 嗯.
Good word for this one is shēng rì. The only word I could find with just e-n-g pronunciation in Mandarin is the reins of a horse, which is a super uncommon character, not worth sharing with you. So essentially there aren't any. So put an sh in front of e-n-g and you've got shēng, this character which means to be born or life, and then rì, day, so life day or born day.
shēng rì, which means birthday. shēng rì. 生日. There's that 日 again. Good opportunity to practice that, as well as that tricky first tone, fourth tone.
生日. Next up is 儿. This is the final E, final.
And it is a wild card. If you check out 儿 on the pinyin chart, it's just kind of got its own little column, hasn't it? You can see it here. It's got nothing else in it. It's just kind of a, well, a wild card.
You could say 儿 is in a league of its own. And I just call it the pirate final. It's literally just. At a fourth tone, you've got number two in Chinese. At a second tone, you've got.
And this means child, such as in the word for son, as in sons or daughter. That's a second tone, fifth tone combination. Is a good opportunity to practice the sound. and the third second tone combination, which again, pretty tricky.
女儿,女儿. If you wanted to say, this is my daughter in Chinese, you would say, 这是我的女儿。 zhè shì wǒ de nǚ'ér.
So when you say this is in Chinese, basically when you use the word this in any other situation other than this one, you cannot use jē yī. You only use jē yī with gè, jē yī ge, or nè yī ge, or nè yī ge. Those three sort of more colloquial expressions, the a pronunciation, you can only use them like that with the gè.
But if you want to say like this is, zhè shì, You have to say 这. You cannot say 这. Don't say 这是我的女儿. That doesn't make any sense.
这是我的女儿. And this 儿 is used for words like 哪里, which means where. And speaking of the 这个那个 situation, 儿 is often added to the end of certain words to make them sound more casual too.
So 哪里 is where in Chinese. But if you said 哪儿, That's also where, but just a slightly more casual version. And you notice it's not written like new R.
New R is written like with an apostrophe and then ER. This is just with a select few words, but the words are relatively common. So it does come up a lot.
When is to play, but you could also say war with the R on the end. Totally up to you. If you want to say when, no, no worries.
You'll never sound weird at any situation. If you said when, it's fine. I just personally prefer war.
I just think it's more fun to say. and it rolls off the tongue better. All right, so that is E, done. Now let's move on to O, the compound and nasal finals for the O pronunciation.
There are really not many of these. So it's just two we've got to cover, O-N-G and O-U. O-N-G is just O, the awesome, O, the O with N-G on the end. A really good one to learn for this is 中国, 中国, literally middle.
or country, middle country. So if you wanted to say I live in China, you would say wǒ zhù zài zhōng guó. I live located in zhōng guó. wǒ zhù zài zhōng guó.
And 欧 is just 欧 with 污, the cool you. 欧, 欧, 欧. One of my favourite vegetables in the entire world that is impossible to find.
in England, apparently, unless you go to like Chinatown in London or something. But it's lotus root. It's absolutely delicious.
偶 吃 lotus root 偶, she will become 丑, ugly. That's why she doesn't eat it. True story. Next, if you put a Z or Zed in front of 偶, you've got 走. Remember, it's that, not 走.
It's not 走, like a buzz. It's slightly explosive, right? So it's a 走. Now, 走 can mean to walk.
It could also mean to leave somewhere and it could mean to die, depending on the context. And don't worry, the context is obvious which one you mean. So obviously if you're saying, that means I'm off. I'm gone. I'm off.
See ya. Obviously you're not saying, I'm just going to go die. Obviously you're not saying that.
So don't worry. Yeah, Chinese is very contextual, but don't let that intimidate you. It's actually really obvious, especially once you learn the characters, which is a big part of what we do here at Mandarin Blueprint.
check the link in the description for our incredible courses, i.e. the blueprint. That's our core curriculum. Now that is O done, right?
So we are making insanely fast progress through this, aren't we? In fact, our progress is getting exponentially faster and faster. The reason why is because we spent extra time going through the building blocks, mastering the simple finals and the initials and the tones. And now we can just get faster and faster.
That's why I think it's always a good idea to spend time on the foundational things first. and that will allow you to go much faster overall in the long term. Next up we have the compound and nasal finals for I.
And there are quite a few more, but don't worry because we've already got to grips with the simple finals, we can just smash our way through these. First up is I and A, which is I A. And as you can probably guess, it's that a pronunciation, the cat a. When just on its own, this ya pronunciation is just on its own without any other initials in front of it, this final will be spelt y-a.
And the most common word with this pronunciation is most likely a-ya, this character here. Ya just means excitement and a also means excitement. It's like a way of adding excitement to what you're saying.
It's a particle, a modal particle. It changes the mood of what you're saying. Usually you just use one. of these but if you use both of them together, it means oh gosh or oh man, usually when something mildly annoying happens.
I actually use this all the time. It's become part of my way of speaking English now. So when something bad happens. And it's also in Australia, which is a different character of course. Put a J in front of it, a sound and you've got jiā, which means home.
How do you think you'd say I'm at home? Wǒ zài jiā, wǒ zài jiā. Next up, yāo, which is y-a-o, y-a-o, yāo, yāo. And this will be spelled y-a-o when on its own. So for example, yāo, which we've covered earlier already, means to want in Chinese.
Yāo. And to say don't want, you just put a bù in front of it. And remember, it's not So if you wanted to ask, which one do you want?
You would say You want which? Which one? Or It's fine too.
And to answer that, you would say I want that one. Now put a J in front of and it turns back to an I-A-O spelling. And 叫 is what you get.
叫 would be to call or be called. Most commonly, it's how to introduce yourself. 我叫Luke. 我叫Luke.
So just put your name after it. 我叫 your name. Next up, we have 耶.
And here, it is the 耶 pronunciation. 耶. And when it's on its own, it's spelled Y-E. Such as with also in Chinese, which is the third tone.
Now, pretty much as far as I know, never going to say it like that because it's never on its own. It's always around stuff. So it's always going to be the zombie tone. Me too.
I also am. And it's just a good way of agreeing with someone. So it's a lazy way as well. It's just really convenient.
Someone says this big long thing. I believe that the political situation in Israel is somewhat challenging. And you could say, 我也是。 Yes, like, me too. He's slow too, or he's also slow.
他也很慢。 Notice that with English, you can say to at the end. You can never put the 也 at the end.
It's always before the thing. 他也很慢。 Put a B in front of 也 and add a second tone, and you've got don't.
in Chinese. 别, 别, which is actually the shortened version of 不要. It's like the shortened version, if you like.
It's more colloquial, casual way of saying don't do something. So 不要, as well as don't want, it's also when you tell someone not to do something, don't, blah, blah, blah. So 别 is like a sort of these two words squished together to make 别. Don't go. You don't go.
你别走。 And if you put an X or the tongue behind the bottom teeth in front of 爷 and add a fourth tone, and then double it up, you've got 谢谢。 谢谢。 And as with many compound words, i.e. words with more than one character, when you double it up, the second one becomes a fifth tone. The second syllable becomes a fifth tone.
Such as with 妈妈 or 爸爸 or 哥哥. So, xie xie is more like thanks. Thank you, the full word is xie xie nǐ, which is relatively rare. But it's fine to say every now and then. No worries.
It's not going to be weird or anything. But most people just say xie xie. It's more common.
Next up, we've got yǒu. And this is another pinyin oddity. We haven't had any oddities for a while, have we? So, this is technically, it's I-O-U.
Y-O. But the O... deleted for some reason I don't know why exactly, but maybe it's a safe space.
So if you check the pinyin chart, you'll see that when it's on its own, y-o-u is how it's spelled. And the most common word in the entire Chinese language, most likely for yu, y-o-u, is with a third tone, and it's pronounced yu, and it means have. And it also means, as well as to have something, it also means there is and there are. And to cancel this out, say not have or don't have or There isn't or there aren't. You don't say 不有.
Please never do that. You say 没有. 没有.
没有 has a second tone. 没有. So how would you ask, do you have a car?
你有车吗? You have car吗? And how would you answer, yes. Yes, I do.
You just take the most important piece of information, repeat it back. The most important piece of information here is have. Well, that's what we're asking. So we just say, And that's when it's absolutely fine to use the full third tone. What about if you want to say, I also have.
Or yes, me too. Me too. I also have. And here we've got an example of multiple third tones. Now it talks about a rule of two third tones together, right?
This one becomes a second tone. But what about if you've got three or four? and it's very unlikely you'll have more than four, but sometimes you might.
What do you do? Well, there are different ways of handling this, depending on what the phrase is. It's fine. Double it up, double second tone.
So, with the third tone at the end. Or you could say, so third, second, third. Both okay.
And in terms of like other situations where there are multiple third tones, there may be one way that's better than the other. And really, I can't tell you consciously, I can just know that I'll probably say it right when I want to say it. And the reason why is because I've had lots of immersion, right?
And that's where the practice comes in. So I'm not just about practicing like out loud, like saying it out loud to get the pronunciation right, but also listening a lot, right? Listening a lot and repeating.
If you listen a lot, you immerse yourself in the language, just like Chinese children learn how to pronounce pretty much perfectly and speak the language very, very well and fluently within just a few short years, you can actually do it faster because you have a fully developed brain. So if you put enough time in every day, you'll be able to get the hang of these and you'll just instinctively know what you're trying to figure out currently consciously. You'll be able to do that subconsciously in a split second because you've just got so much data in your brain because you've immersed a lot.
And that's it. That's really the key. There's not really much magic hack to this. And while we're here, I know that this is not a grammar lesson, but I didn't want you to be getting distracted with questions.
Oh, you said it also had the meaning of there is and there are. So, you can also mean there is or there are. So, you would say, on the table, or literally, table on, there is a cat. That is the Chinese word order for this sort of thing. And again, Don't get scared by the word order.
It is different, but the secret, guess what, is immersion. Once you get used to the language, you listen to it a lot, this will become second nature. So please don't be intimidated. Next up, put an L in front of the Y-O-U and it becomes L-I-U.
Again, which is technically L-I-O-U, but they just delete the O. Add a fourth tone and it's L-I-O, which is six. That's number six in Chinese.
So it goes one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, like that, eight, because it looks like number eight in Chinese. That's the character. Nine, and then ten, or ten, like that. Liu liu liu.
Liu liu liu is a way of saying awesome. The number 666 in Chinese, while it represents the devil and hell and all that sort of bad stuff in the West, 666 is like... Like, it's like really cool.
It's like the best number ever. Liu, Liu, Liu. And it's nothing to do with the Bible or God or the devil or anything like that. It's just that six is a really lucky number because it sounds similar to Liu.
With the second tone, Liu is like to flow of water. So basically everything will go smoothly. And that's really common.
And number eight is even luckier than six. Ba, ba, number eight, because it rhymes with fa, which is short for. 发财, which means to get rich, right?
So it's like a couple of steps removed, but that's the logic behind it. Oh, that's also why four, by the way, is the worst number. Four is right? And that is very close to 死 with a third tone. And that means death.
So Chinese people will avoid the number four at all costs. You'll never find a number four on anyone's car license plate. or not like know of anyway, they certainly don't want them. And they'll avoid the number four in their phone numbers at all costs.
Put a J in front of you and add a third tone and you've got nine. Jiu, jiu, jiu, liu is what Chinese refer to as their nine to five. And it's a very sad story.
Because Chinese people do not work nine to five. The average Chinese sort of work person, the average person that works in an office or something like that works 9am, 10am. to 9pm, right?
And six days a week. The reason why is because they're very much into getting better at their job and being promoted. And on top of all that, they still have to do overtime for free and respond to messages on the days off.
And it's just, oh, and go out drinking with the boss whenever he or she wants them to. It's a pretty tough life. Next up is Yen, Yi, Eh, N, yes, Eh.
So in this situation, this is one of the very rare situations where the A in Chinese is pronounced like the E in 10. This is why it's good to have this kind of pronunciation training when it comes to Chinese and pinyin. Because pronunciation is not just about producing it. It's about reading it, the pinyin, and also identifying it. And if these three don't match up, you end up with broken words. So you end up with a situation where you think one word is pronounced a certain way.
And because of that, your misunderstanding leads you to miss opportunities. When you hear that word said out loud, your visualization of that word, which syllable it is, how it's spelled, is mismatched. And therefore, you miss opportunities to understand what you're hearing. So imagine if you thought that the word gym, G-Y-M, was pronounced gyme, right?
Which I think is from The Simpsons, actually. Gyme. What's a gyme?
But if that was the case, every time someone said jim out loud, you wouldn't make the connection between that sound and the concept of a jim. You'd be like, oh, jim, what's that? That's a geim. So it's really important. This is why it's so important to learn how to read the pronunciations like what we're doing right now and also learn how to pronounce it and how to identify the sound.
So by itself, this is written Y-A-N. Yen, not yan. So, yin with the first tone, probably the most common word, is cigarette or tobacco. To 抽烟, 抽烟.
抽 means to draw out, and 烟 means essentially smoke. So, here is 抽烟, to smoke. So, if you wanted to say, he is smoking, like right now, here's what you would say.
他在抽烟。 So, 在 again. It's the same character from before.
It's not just locations in space. It's also locations in time, you could say. So when you want to say something is happening right now, the best way of doing that, easiest way is just to add 在 in front of it. And it becomes the ING version.
它在抽烟. And that's a good opportunity to practice our first tone, first tone. Smoking is super common everywhere in China, even in more sort of westernized areas like Shanghai and Beijing.
Super common. And you can even find cigarette smoke. very strong smell of cigarette smoke in unexpected areas, shall we say, such as kids play areas at shopping centres because everyone smokes in the toilets in the shopping malls and so the smoke just sort of wafts out.
And even gyms, you might smell cigarette smoke in the gym or even libraries, that sort of thing. And you will be asked to smoke. There's not so much of a stigma associated with smoking as there is in the West.
So just get ready for this phrase. 你抽烟吗? And if you do smoke, you just say 谢谢. Thank you and take the cigarette and go ahead. But if you don't smoke, you just say I no smoke.
Thank you. 我不抽烟。 谢谢。
我不抽烟。 谢谢。 Put a Q, the 起 sound in front of the IAN. Add a second tone, you've got money.
钱,有钱 is have money, which means rich. Yes, Chinese words are this logical. Have money. 又前再见!
Again, see, this is a different character. It's not the same 再 we've been talking about over and over in this video. 再见 means again.
再见 means goodbye. 再见. Next up we have 央.
央, another one that trips people up if they don't have proper pronunciation training. Because this is now going back to the cat A, the A. But you saw the A-N-G from before, you might be tempted to pronounce this. Yang with the Ang, the father A.
Please don't do that because it's got the I in front. That's what changes it. Just keep an eye out for that I or the Y, of course. This is spelt Y-A-N-G when it's on its own. So Yang is a very common name.
It's actually the surname of my wife. There are only around a hundred or so common surnames in China. It's not like the West, right?
Or non-Chinese places where I assume everywhere pretty much is the same, where you have just like... like tons and tons of different potential surnames. Really, there's only 100, and you'll just see yang all the time, right?
Yang is like one of the most common ones in the entire country. Yang means appearance. You don't use this on its own.
You use it with other characters, such as yang, yang. And remember, it's the yi tone change rule here, so it becomes a second tone. Yang. Literally. One appearance.
One appearance, which means the same. Put an L in front of yang and add a third tone and you've got liang. Liang.
Usually you'll have ge with liang. And liang means two. Two of something. Not er. Er is the number two.
That's the numeral. But when you're counting pairs of things, essentially, when you're saying... objects, or people, and there's two of them, you'll use liǎngge, or liǎngge.
So zhè liǎngge yǐyàng. These two, zhè liǎngge, are the same, yǐyàng. You don't need to say shì yǐyàng here, you just say zhè liǎngge yǐyàng. These two, same.
How would you say these two are not the same? Exactly the same sentence, but just add a bù here. Zhè liǎngge. bù yǐ yàng. Don't forget that tone change here.
Next up we have yín. So yín plus n, it's pronounced yín, e-e-n basically, yín. And it's spelt like this, y-i-n, when it's on its own.
For example in sound or tone, which is a character that is not used on its own. It's usually used with other sounds such as shēng yīn, shēng yīn, which means voice, shēng yīn. And what we're learning today right here is called pīn yīn.
Pīn is like a piece and yīn is sound, so it's pieces of sounds. Pīn yīn. Nīn is the polite word for you. So if you're talking to someone who's a higher status than you, or you want to just show politeness in some situation, or it's a more formal situation, you might say 您 instead of 你. So for example, 您好.
Now add a J and you've got 今天 is today. What's today's date? Or today, how many day?
And both of these can be used, whether it's 几日. which is what we covered earlier, or 几号, that's actually the more casual way. 几日 is pretty formal. 今天几日, or 今天几号, 今天几日, 今天几号.
Next up, we've got 音, 音, which is kind of like 音, but you will hear like a 嘴 sound with this one sometimes. You're like, ah, there's a 嘴, 音. ying and that's because some people from usually the north they'll have a more of like a sort of sound when they say this kind of like i always imagine like goofy sound like like it's got a kind of sound so instead of just saying ying which is the like if you're training in china to be like a news broadcaster that's absolutely standard mandarin but some people again usually from the north they will actually say it so it sounds like they're adding a yuh sound to it.
They'll say it more like ying, ying. But either way is correct. I just go for the ying, ying sound.
That's absolutely fine. I'll go for a more standard way. But if you prefer, you can do the ying sound, the goofy sound.
Dian ying. Dian ying. So it's really short, isn't it?
That third tone. Dian ying. Again, some of the northerners might say, dian ying.
Dian ying. Ming tian. Ming tian. Or ming tian. Some people might say, ming tian.
Means tomorrow. Or qing, which means please. Qing.
Sorry, I just said it with the y sound then because I'm getting... I'm building that habit now by saying it so much. 请, 请.
So you just add that to the front of what you want to say. And that makes it more polite, saying please. Next up, 用, 用. So that's a 用 and a 用. 用, 用.
Again, that's spelled Y-O-N-G when it's on its own. Such as in 用, to use. 用.
So if something is useful, we can say it has use. How would you say something is useless? It does not have a use. So someone says, and you can say, literally, no need, thank.
And say it with a nice smile. It's just like a polite way of just saying, ah, you're welcome. Put a Q in front of and add a second tone, and you've got poor in Chinese. 穷 qǒng Add a first tone and put an X in front of it instead and you've got vicious. 凶 xūng That's I done.
We are now finished with I and we're going to move straight on to 玉 yù or 乌 wù, the compound and nasal finals associated with this one. And there's also quite a lot of them, but again, we can smash our way through now that we have a great foundation in pronunciation. So here they are.
We're going to get to grips with all of these syllables in just a few minutes. First up is 哇 wǒ So that's u plus a is ua, wa. And a really common word for this is just what I said, wa.
And that means wow. Wa sa is like the full word. So wa sa is like wow. It's more slang.
Wa sa, wa sa. Put an H in front of wa and you've got hua, hua. Remember the H is kind of a bit scratchy.
It's got hua. It doesn't have to be like hua, like you're really super scratchy with it. But...
it's usually got a slight scratch to it. So, hua, hua. And this is another word, one of the select few words that you can add the r on in a very common sort of natural way.
Huar. Instead of hua, you can say huar. Next up is wo, which we've already covered in the o section.
It's spelt w o, as you already know. Wo, we've already covered wo, i in Chinese. So, let's just put a d in front of it and add a first tone.
And we've got duo. 多 means a lot, and 小 is usually a third tone, and it means a few. 多少 together means many few, which is a way of asking how much or how many.
Put money after it, and you've got how much in terms of money. How much money? 多少钱? Remember, this is a fifth tone.
All right, next up we have the compound final 微. which is very similar to the one we covered in the I section, the youl one, or well, technically youl. So actually what this is, is you-e-i, technically speaking.
So it's the a that we covered earlier with a u in front of it, and it's spelled w-e-i when it's on its own. But just like with the youl pronunciation, it has one letter deleted, probably to save space, maybe to save ink on the typefaces. After all, pinyin was invented. back in the 50s.
So when you talk on the phone in Chinese, just like we say hello, in Chinese they say 喂 or 喂, usually the second tone. 喂 is only used on the phone, that's it. Now 为什么 in Chinese is literally 为 is for the sake of and then 什么 is what.
So for the sake of what is why, for the sake of what, for the sake of what, why. 为什么? And then to answer, usually we say 因为. 因, this character here, is reason.
So reason is for the sake of, and I said fourth tone, 因为, but often it's spoken as a fifth tone. 因为. So how might you say in Chinese, why are they eating? Or they, why?
are eating. 他们为什么在? There's that 在 again.
吃饭,eating, 在吃饭。 Why? 在吃饭,eating. And why would someone eat usually? Because they are hungry.
How would you answer that? Because they are hungry. 因为他们饿了。
I mean, added that 呀, which you learned earlier in 哎呀 on the end. When you put it on the end of stuff, often what it does is it makes it like 得, because they're hungry, it adds that kind of attitude on. 你们他们饿了呀。 And the reason why these particles exist in Chinese, where they don't really exist in English, is that Chinese is a tonal language, right? So they use tones to express the meaning of words.
And while they still do have intonation, they stress certain syllables to get different emotions across. Often it's less clear because it's a tonal language already, right? So they use these particles to add that mood or that emotion behind the words instead of just relying on... the emphasis on certain syllables.
Put a D in front of 位 at a fourth tone and you've got 对 which means right or really it's more like correct. That's probably the, well, most correct definition of this. And remember technically this is spelt like this but they just deleted the E.
How would you ask is that correct? You could say 对吗? Right? Or you could use the other way of asking questions which is 对不对? You'd add a 不.
So you're saying, is that right? And you just answer, 对. Right. Yes. This character 对, actually, the original meaning is to face.
And 不起, again with the fifth tone, 不起, is a compliment that means cannot. I cannot do the thing I just said, which is facing you. So it's a really serious way of saying sorry, or rather serious. It's like when you actually really mean it.
对不起. I can't face you right now. 对不起. Next up we have Y. So, 屋, 啊, 衣.
Y. Of course, this will be spelled W-A-I. That's right.
Y when it's by itself. Outside is Y with a fourth tone. He is outside.
外面. We add the 面 on to make the full word for outside. Literally, 面, it has many meanings, but in this context, 面 means face or side of something. So, y-nya is outside. Add a k in front and change it back to a u.
And we've got kuai, which means quick. Kuai. But with this different character, just take note of what the character looks like here. And then we're going to switch it up to the same pronunciation. Kuai, but with a different character.
This character is a measure word for lumps of things. That's what money used to be. Lumps of things, which is lumps of metal, usually.
So, how many lumps of money? which means how much money. But 几 is usually for numbers one to ten, you know, just a handful of things.
几块钱 is therefore going to be for something relatively cheap, like chewing gum or something. Whereas 多少钱 would be like if you're buying a TV or something that's at least over, you know. 20 kuai or 15 kuai, over 10 kuai. Oh, and jǐ kuai qián can also be the answer to a question. It can also be a few dollars.
So jǐ, this character can mean how much and a few, depending on the context. And again, don't worry about it. It'll become very clear, second nature to when which one is going to be used. Next up, we have wán, wú plus an, which is wán. And of course, it's spelt with a w-a-n.
So, one, W-A-N. Add a third tone and you've got late in Chinese, or evening. 晚。 Are you going? 你去不去?
不去。 太晚了。 This 太了 is how you say two in Chinese.
It's two characters put on either side. 太晚了, or 太大了 would be too big, or 太高了, too tall. 喜欢, put an H in front of the one. And make it a fifth tone and put it with 喜 and you've got to like in Chinese, which both of these characters both mean to like. 喜欢, 喜欢.
Again, you've got the high fifth tone, 喜欢. So you just say, 我喜欢 you, I like you. So you just say, 我喜欢 and then add whatever you like.
So you can add 我喜欢你, I like you or 我喜欢狗. I like dogs. Wun. Wun.
This is another one where a letter has been deleted for you, most likely to save space. So technically, this is spelt U-E-N. And they just removed the E. W-E-N with a fourth tone is 问. So we've got the short put E here, the 问.
But with a 问 in front, 问. That means to ask in Chinese. And 请问, please ask, is may I ask.
请问, it's a great way to start off asking maybe a stranger, somebody you don't know very well, or in a more formal setting, asking them a question. 你叫什么名字? You called what name? You called what name? 你叫什么名字?
What's your name? That's the most standard way of asking that question. And how would you answer? Of course, 我叫, and then your name. Now, if you put a G in front of 问 and made it a third tone, you would be able to say a very rather dangerous word in Chinese, 滚.
滚 it means go away i would say it's pretty darn close to f off okay so use it sparingly but if you're going to say it seriously then expect an altercation of some kind like to happen immediately but you can also say it in a joking way between friends like 滚 you know to sort of like maybe they're saying a joke about you and you can just tell them to go away so it depends on how you say it to a certain degree But you can make this very offensive, so be careful. Next up, we have wang, wu, plus ang. No funny tricks.
It is actually the ang, the father a here, a-n-g, wang, wang. And it's spelled w-a-n-g, as you may have guessed up until this point. But I'm going to keep mentioning it. So wang is a fourth tone.
Wang means forget, but we don't usually say it on its own. We would say it something like, I forgot. Ah, I forgot.
I forgot. I forgot. Add an H in front and add a first tone.
And you've got huang, which is the word for panic in Chinese. And you can say don't panic using the word we learned earlier. Don't panic. Don't panic.
Add an SH with the tongue a little bit up, like you're saying garage. Shuang. Shuang, which is like refreshing.
So, you would say this one in a lot of different situations. whenever you get something that you want in a really sort of satisfying way so you're really hungry you eat a delicious meal oh how strong how strong it's often used like that with how or i'm thirsty and you have a nice cool drink of your favorite coca-cola or whatever oh how strong or maybe it's used in other ways like oh you someone you don't like something bad happens to them ah how strong like seeing that person fall over and embarrass himself haha how strong and it's used in uh well potentially uh rather naughty way as well, which I will leave to your imagination. Next up, we've got wung, wung, wu, ng. So we've learned ng already.
Just add a u in front of it, and you've got wung, spelt like this, as I'm sure you guessed by now, w-e-n-g. It's not really used in many words. The most common way it's used is probably in the onomatopoeia. I'm trying to pronounce that word.
I need a class on English pronunciation for that. Onomatopoeia buzz. One, one, one, one, one, one, one.
Does sound like a buzz, right? So when you're describing, you'll see that in books, describing flies or bees buzzing around. And that's it. That is the U's done as well.
And we are so close to the finish line here, guys. So stay with me. We're going to go to the U's now.
So as you know, there's only three major pronunciations that we need to cover. First is U, E, U, which is the E, the 10 E sound. U, E.
and this is how it's spelled on its own. 月 Fourth tone for this would be month or moon. 月 一月 We already talked about this earlier when we were talking about the tone sanding. 一月 One month would be January. 二月 February.
And guess what March would be? 三月 So if you said 几号, that's like, what's the day today? But if you wanted the full date, you might say 几月几号? How many months? How many days?
几月几号? That's like the full way of saying it. Put an X in front of 月 and add a second tone.
You've got 学, which means to study, which is what we're doing right now. We are studying Chinese or learning Chinese. 我们在学中文。
We are studying. That's the 在 again. We are learning Chinese.
我们在学中文。 愿。 Be careful with this one because again it's the pronunciation for this a here. This is how it's spelled. Y-U-A-N.
远 with a third tone would be far away. Far. So how would you say too far? I don't want to go.
It's too far. 太远了。 So if we kept that third tone and put an X in front of it, instead we get choose in Chinese. 选。
选。 Which one do you want to choose? How would you say that in Chinese? Or you want to choose which? 你要。
You want 选哪个? 选哪个 would be how you'd actually say it, because we've got two third tones here, haven't we? 你要选哪个 or 哪个 And finally, the final final in the entire opinion chart, 晕,晕.
So when you're saying this one, say it something like this, 晕,晕. So it's not 晕, like you're doing that, like really exaggerated, but it's just that slight. little bit of an E to it.
So yun, yun, and that's how it's spelled. Y-U-N. Yun is cloud.
Yunnan is Yunnan province in China, which is where I spend most of my time when I'm in China. It's a beautiful province, and it means literally cloud south, because it's in the south of China, and it's famous for its incredible weather. 运气 with the fourth tone is the full word for luck or fortune.
So if you say 好运, that means good luck. 祝你好运 is how you say good luck in Chinese, the full way of saying it. 祝你, 祝 is to bless or wish upon someone, wish upon you, good luck, 好运。 军队, 军队 is army. 裙子 is skirt, 裙子.
And 训练 is to train. One more thing I want to mention about the simple final 语 before we move on. So if you check out the pinyin chart, you'll see that we have 语 up here. And then we have 女 and 女 there.
And then we have these three, 句句 and 序. Take a closer look and you'll see that N 语 and L 语, they have the two dots. But These three and the yu do not.
Now, why is that? Well, if you look over here, these two are also nu and lu. So these two here have to have the two dots above them.
They have to show the two dots to signify, hey, these are umlaut u we're talking about. We aren't talking about the u, the nu and lu pronunciations because they're very different. And you'll notice that there is no yu really in Chinese.
There's no yu. pronunciation. And there's no J-U-Q-U-X-U over here.
Look, it just doesn't exist. So they don't need to put the dots. And while we're on this subject, by the way, if you wanted to type these two, do not type N-U because you'll just type this or this.
Or if you type L-U, you'll end up typing this. And the characters related to lu and nu will pop up for you in your dictionary when you're typing. When you want to type these two, you'll type N-V on your keyboard or L-V.
Just something to keep in mind when you want to apply this to real life and start texting in Chinese. All right, there you go, guys. We have now covered every single initial and every single final in the language, which means you now have the ability to pronounce every single sound in Mandarin Chinese with the correct tone.
like a native speaker. Now I've mentioned already multiple times in this masterclass that to develop really good pronunciation, accurate pronunciation, maybe even native-like pronunciation, it's going to require a lot of practice. In fact, I would say 95% of your results come from how you practice, and 5% comes from theory. It's a very important 5%, but that's where your results come from, is how you actually apply it, listening and repeating, and actually practicing it.
in real life. So this section is all about how to practice. Here's how to improve your pronunciation fast.
So again, theory is 5%. Rewatch this video, or maybe even buy our course, Pronunciation Mastery, for a more in-depth guide. Practice is 95%. So do things like shadowing, self-talk, listening immersion, and tutoring. That's where the majority of your results will come in.
I suggest carving out just five minutes a day to do shadowing. That's a really good one. So You put on some audio and if you're a beginner, just individual sentences will be more than enough.
Okay, just take a selection of them. You can just use the materials that you get for free in the description below, the audio files that come with this course. if you like. Just put those on shuffle or something. And as they play, you repeat along with them and just repeat in exactly the same way or as close as you possibly can to the speaker.
So if you just do shadowing for five minutes a day, even, you'll see massive gains after 10, 20, 30 days. Seriously, just try it out and just stick with it and you'll notice a big difference. Same with listening. So it's not just about your mouth muscles that need practice. It's your brain.
The neurons need to be physically built in your brain. And that is only going to happen with lots of listening immersion. If you listen and repeat to what you hear, that's going to get all three areas of your pronunciation going. It's going to get your, well, two of the three.
It's going to get your ability to identify and produce. Your ability to read opinion is pretty much already there after watching this masterclass. If you're ever concerned that you're getting the tones wrong a lot, it's simply because you haven't practiced enough.
That's it. If you practice a ton, You listen every day for like an hour, a couple of hours, not just to, you know, boring, repetitive things, but actually immerse in the language and try to shadow where you can as well. Maybe for a few minutes a day. You do that consistently and your tone troubles will gradually just disappear. Which brings me on to the next one.
Mimic. Like, actually, when you hear and see people, choose someone that you like, that you want to sound like, and just mimic them. Like, actually, as if you're an actor.
You know, you're actually trying to do an impression of that person. Recording yourself is a great idea. So you can listen to yourself. You don't have to do this every day, but it works good as a benchmark. So maybe you can listen to yourself and send in recordings to your tutor.
And often you'll hear yourself speak and you'll notice mistakes that you don't notice as you're speaking. But when you hear the recording of yourself, things get a lot more clear. So do that every now and then to seek feedback from a tutor. Where am I going wrong?
Try to find a tutor, say, on italki that actually has experience in pronunciation. Even if they don't have that much experience, they can tell you, oh, your J or your Q, your X sounds a little bit off. They might not have the expertise like I do to be able to point out, therefore, you need to do this. But you know from watching this video that if your J and your Q and your X has got a problem that's been pointed out by a native speaker, then you know what you need to do.
is just watch that section again, make sure your tongue's in the right place. So first off, tone drills, that's just every day, read the tone pair chart one by one out loud. And you'll have audio for each one of the tone pairs I'm gonna include with this as well.
So you can just play the audio and even record yourself saying it back if you like, if you wanna go that extra mile, but just say them out loud maybe once or twice a day. And when we say set anchors, what we're saying is you choose a common word in Chinese. for each one of the tone pairs. There's 19 words to choose, right?
Once you've chosen that word, it's like, Fadey is first tone, first tone. That means airplane. So I'm just going to work on mastering Fadey. I'm going to say that perfectly, exactly how the audio says. And the cool thing is, when it comes to tones, just like we have different instruments, like a saxophone playing an A and a piano playing an A, it's the same A, right?
Or at least to my knowledge, it is. Someone who knows about music is probably going to say in the comments, actually, it's not. But I think you get what I'm trying to say anyway.
So the note is the same, right? There is an A and there's a B and there's a C. Just like this first tone, first tone is the same.
No matter if you're saying 今天 or if you're saying 飞机, the tone pairs are the same. See, so choose one word and just master that word and then do it for the next. And so just choose 19 words and say, I'm going to say these 19 words perfectly.
and you'll say the tone pairs perfectly. And that will be able to be applied to all other matching tone pairs in the language. So try minimal pairs as well.
I'll include some minimal pairs audio. It's basically audio for sounds in Chinese. And this also applies to any language. Every language has minimal pairs, you know, things that sound very similar. QIN and QING, you know, Q-I-N versus Q-I-N-G sounds super similar.
But I will point something out, which is minimal pairs are still difficult for me at this level. But only when they're said in isolation. But when I hear words said together, I can tell, oh, it must be Q-I-N because Q-I-N-G is never paired with that other sound.
And that is where I would recommend that just improving your vocabulary over time will naturally improve your pronunciation, your listening, your ability to identify. So don't obsess over minimal pairs and beat yourself up if you just can't tell the difference between certain isolated syllables. because a lot of native speakers probably wouldn't be able to either in a lot of ways.
So just use it as a little bit of extra practice. Take it with a pinch of salt. Don't like get too worried about the results. Slow down, then speed up. So if you're having trouble saying something out loud, it's most likely because your muscles simply haven't developed yet.
So if you go boxing, for example, and you try and do like a four punch combo in a row before you've mastered just the basic jab cross, then you're going to have big trouble. and it's just going to be an absolute mess, right? So for example, when I started out with Chinese, I would try and say stuff like 这件事情 and I can say it now without any problem 这件事情 right? 这件事情, but if you think about it, it's like, I call it tongue acrobatics, right? Because 这 is like your tongue's a bit further up than it would be normally in English.
见 is again behind the bottom teeth, not an English thing at all. So 这件事情, so you're just, your tongue's just doing this and you don't have the flexibility, the agility yet. And that takes just like practicing boxing. It takes weeks, maybe even months to fully smoothly say that with a lot of practice.
So 这就是我说的, Just slow down your speech. 这件事情 Just slow down that part of your speech and then speed up. Another way to look at this is, say the thing as fast as you can, but whilst still being correct, and then gradually train yourself to say that correctly, but faster and faster and faster. A good way of doing this is practicing tongue twisters. Immerse, immerse, immerse.
Again, most of your problems in terms of identifying pronunciation when you're listening. just your listening skill basically will be improved through listening. All right, so just keep immersing. Things will become clear. Just trust your brain.
We'll just figure it out. Your subconscious mind is half a million times more powerful than your conscious mind, apparently. So just let it do its thing. Stay consistent.
That's important just in general when it comes to language learning. But if you're concerned that your pronunciation is not where you want it to be, not like it's not perfect because 99.9% of people can never have perfect Mandarin pronunciation and vice versa. Chinese people can't have perfect English pronunciation because when you develop a certain way of speaking, your mouth muscles are formed in a certain way.
Very, very few people can expect to attain like perfect pronunciation. It's just super, super hard. And nor do you need to. I mentioned this earlier in the video.
You're aiming for accurate pronunciation, first of all. But let's say your pronunciation genuinely does have an issue. and you're trying to fix it.
Stay consistent. Don't try and do four hours a day of pronunciation practice. Stick to a few minutes a day, but consistently set like a habit app, like set a thing. I've got to get this thing done. A little bit of practice, 30 seconds, a minute, five minutes a day, whatever.
Get it done every single day. And consistently over time, you will see the results. Accept inconsistencies.
So there are a ton of things about Mandarin in the real world that will be different from what you've heard in this video. There's some extra details, like for example, tone sandy, tone change rules. There are some other slight tone change rules that are very, very minimal in terms of their effect.
But you'll notice something like, hang on a minute, like some people say like two first tones in a row. They'll say the first one and the second one slightly differently. So what? It's like, one is said like almost like you could say an octave lower than the other. On top of that, most Chinese people, do not speak standard Mandarin.
Very, very few people speak like standard, standard, like 100% standard. A lot of people do speak very, very good Mandarin, of course, but perfect Mandarin with like no accent whatsoever. I mean, it's quite rare. So you're going to hear things that are different from what you've learned in today's video.
So here are some examples of inconsistencies that came up for me. And there's more than this, but just to show you what I'm talking about. So anyway.
yin wei is a fourth tone or often fifth tone yin wei yin wei but often you'll hear people say yin wei with the second tone you're like why because no why that's why because that's what chinese people will do sometimes you know there's a slight we call it principle versus reality so we've learned the theory the principle behind all this stuff but in reality things are often slightly different when you go into the actual cage and start fighting things are a little bit different you know wait Sometimes you'll hear it, V. This drove me crazy when I heard my wife saying this when I first met her. She would say, V, Shama. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You just heard a V. I was like, where is V? There's no V in Chinese, literally.
It's the only letter that doesn't exist except when you're typing. So what the heck are you saying V for? She's like, what do you mean? I didn't say V, Shama.
I said V, Shama. I should say it with a V. I'm like, so sometimes they don't even know. Sometimes the native speakers can't even hear what you're talking about.
It's there. But they didn't learn Chinese from a book. They didn't learn Chinese from standard, like broadcast standard Chinese, you know.
生日 is sometimes 生日, right? And that's more because of the South. In the South, they don't pronounce ZH and CH at all, really.
So they'll try and speak Mandarin. They might just say 生日, comes out with a 日 sort of sound. 不知道 in the North, you'll hear 不让. That's how people say it, 不让, right?
Super quick. and they'll get rid of the whole 之的, like they get they'll just delete this and they'll replace it with an r and say 多少 or 多少 they'll say 多少 They get rid of the SH and replace it with an R because it's easier to say. 多少, I say 多少, right?
Because it's just easier and I'm lazy. 吃饭, again, in the South, they don't say 吃饭, they say 吃饭, 吃, right? So different dialects, different areas of the country say things differently.
So do not worry about the inconsistencies. Just notice them. Oh, that's interesting.
Don't go, hey, wait a minute. Either you're saying it wrong or my teacher's wrong. everyone's right. We're both right. It's just the way it is.
And it's going to take you quite a bit of time. And there'll still be things even after years that you'll notice little things. Don't worry, it's not going to affect your ability to communicate or be understood or understand. But it's just like a huh, it's like a thing that will pop up and go, hang on a minute, that's not what I learned.
And you'll keep noticing that and having that phenomenon sort of happen over your entire journey with Chinese. Make friends, the community is super important, not just with pronunciation, but in general, your entire learning journey. We have recently at Mandarin Blueprint just invested tenfold into our community and we've made it better than ever.
It's actually an integral part of what we do now. And it's super important to have somewhere where you can fit in and say, oh, these are my people. We're not only learning Chinese, we're learning it in the same way, using the same course, for example, with the Mandarin Blueprint community. But you fit in, also stand out and say, hey, look what I did today.
oh, I passed this milestone. And people say, yay, well done, give you a like. It's like, it's awesome. That is going to keep you going. That's going to keep you attracted to maintaining this habit of not only building your pronunciation and improving that, but also just generally achieving fluency.
Document your progress, whether that's sharing on a blog or just notes in your iPhone or whatever, just journaling. You share yourself. I like to do recordings. I do a weekly review, just in English. I just do a weekly review.
of my, I sometimes do it in Chinese when I don't want people to hear me if I'm in England, I'm like doing my weekly review, I'll speak in Chinese, because it's sometimes quite personal, you know, but you give a part of your weekly review or your journal is about where your progress is. Did you have any setbacks? Or did you have any achievements?
Note them down, make note of them, because you will forget them. And it's good to highlight achievements when you do have them. And then you'll use this sort of data that you've collected.
That's why probably writing it down as a short journal, like a brief journal, every day or every week is overall the best way because you can then reflect and adjust. You can say, oh, I was here a year ago. I said that about my pronunciation. Now I'm here. Next, I want to just tell you to learn to read and make sure that you're continuing to build your vocabulary.
Pronunciation is just the first step. And whilst cementing your pronunciation with a few minutes a day, you should be. going on your journey towards fluency, real fluency, authentic proficiency in this language by learning how to read, that will give you the ability to access higher level immersion content much, much earlier. And learning characters is not only just a beautiful process, it just makes learning words and just acquiring the language in general 10 times easier, I don't know, maybe 100 times easier, rather than just relying on pinyin.
So that's why I highly recommend if you're still watching at this point, go check out the Blueprint. our core curriculum here at Mandarin Blueprint will take you from zero to pretty much any level of Chinese you want to, zero to a 3000 plus characters, almost 12,000 words, thousands and thousands of example sentences all fed to you carefully as you progress through the course. And I hope you found this masterclass useful.
Please go ahead and save it, rewatch it over the years you're spending with Chinese and also save this video, give it a like, please subscribe to our channel. Make sure you rewatch this video if you ever need help with your pronunciation. Share it with someone that you think might find it useful.
And please, please, please don't forget to download the free stuff in the description as well, even if you do nothing else, because it's just free audio files that will make sure that you fully acquire and are able to fully practice all of the stuff you've learned here today. Watch this one next, and I'll see you there. Bye-bye.