Mandarin Monday: Learning Your ABCs... in Chinese
Mandarin Monday is a weekly column where we help you improve your Chinese by detailing learning tips, fun and practical phrases, and trends.
No matter whether you're budding Chinese linguist or common language learner, one practical skill to have in your arsenal is knowing your ABCs in Chinese. However, while the English alphabet is commonly used in Chinese to denote anything from addresses, subway exits, and online profanity (NMSL, anyone?), there's not actually a standardized way on how to pronounce them and most Chinese learn the pronunciation of Latin letters simply from day-to-day experience.
As you can probably imagine, this makes things a bit tricky, with some letters having character transliterations, while others don't feature in Mandarin at all. We found that the best and most comprehensive instruction on letter pronunciation in Chinese is featured on Stack Exchange, which has been reproduced in full below. The list usefully provides characters for letters where possible as well as approximate English transliterations, while the parts in parentheses are additions made based on our experience of how letters are used.
- A: 诶 ēi /ei/ A
- B: 比 bī /pi/
- C: 西 xī /ɕi/ or /si/ or 'sei' /sei/ say
- D: 弟 dì /ti/ or dei /tei/
- E: 一 yì /ji/
- F: 'e-fu' /efu/ where the 'u' is often only pronounced lightly producing a pronunciation of approximately /ef/ as pronounced in English. Note that the 'fu' is most often pronounced with a neutral tone.
- G: 计 jì /t͡si/ similar to Z.
- H: ei-chi /eit͡sʰɨ/ where the 'ɨ' is often only pronounced lightly producing a pronunciation of approximately /eit͡sʰ/ 'age' as pronounced in English.
- I: 哀 āi /ai/ I
- J: 'zhei' /t͡sei/
- K: 'kei' /kʰei/ K
- L: /el/ L note that this letter is most often pronounced with the second (rising) tone.
- M: em /em/ M (Often sounds more like 'am.')
- N: 恩 ēn /ən/
- O: 欧 ōu /oʊ/
- P: 批 pī /pʰi/ or 胚 pēi /pʰei/ pay
- Q: 'ki-ou' /kʰiou/
- R: /aɻ/ R note that this letter is most often pronounced with the second (rising) tone.
- S: 'e-si' /esɨ/ where the 'i' is often only pronounced lightly producing a pronunciation of approximately /es/ 'as' as pronounced in English.
- T: 梯 tī /tʰi/ or 'tei' /tʰei/
- U: 优 yōu /joʊ/ yo
- V: 微 wēi /wei/ way
- W: 大播柳 dà bō liǔ /tapuo'lioʊ/
- X: 'eg-si' /eksɨ/ where the 'i' is often only pronounced lightly producing a pronunciation of approximately /eks/ 'ax' as pronounced in English.
- Y: 歪 wāi /wai/
- Z: 计 jì /t͡si/ similar to G. (Often sounds more like 'zei' with a fourth (falling) tone.)
Finally, this list attempts to provide as standardized as possible a pronunciation reference for the alphabet, but individual pronunciation among Chinese speakers is likely to be affected by a person's exposure to native English and/or someone's regional dialect.
READ: Chinese Idioms for Spring to Help Your Vocabulary Bloom
Image: callcentrehelper.com
