Mandarin

Mandarin dialects are by far the most wide spread in China. It spans from the north eastern province of Heilongjiang to the south eastern province of Guangxi. As a result, of this large expanse, it is often termed the northern dialect. Another outcome of its widespread use, is that it has become the lingua franca in China. Putonghua [

] , based on the dialect of Beijing, is the paragon for Mandarin or Northern dialects [

Phonology

Initials

b	p	m	f
d	t	n			l
z	c		s
zh	ch		sh	r
j	q		x
g	k		h
vowel, w, y

The symbol { here is used to indicate a "zero initial", that is, the sound begins with a vowel, w, or y in the PinYin transcription.

Vowels

Pinyin transcription	i			o		y	er	e					a
IPA

Compare with a table of vowels.

You will notice that some of the vowels in this table do not appear in the rhymelist below. This is due to some minor pronunciation distinctions found in some characters. For example 'song' is romanised ge and transcribed as /ke/ but has pronunciation

is associated with

Consonantal Final

Pinyin transcription	n	ng
IPA

Tones

Traditional Categories	Yin Ping	Yang Ping	Shang	Qu
Tone Number	1	2	3	4
Tone Contour	/55/	/35/	/213/	/51/

Rhymes

To main page : Yue : Hakka : Wu : Min : Gan : Xiang

References

The information above is derived from two sources:
- HanYu FangYan CiHui (Chinese Language Dialects Vocabulary List), Second Edition. Beijing University Chinese Linguistics Department, School of Linguistics Research Office Publication. YuWen Publishers. ISBN 962-231-231-4. (1995)
- ShengYunXue (Chinese Phonology). LIN Tao, GENG ZhenSheng. SanMin Publication House. ISBN 957-14-2677-6. (1999)

Consonants : Vowels : Index : Homepage

This page was first created on Saturday 31st July 1999,
and was recently updated on Thursday 25th April 2002.

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