PRONUNCIATION OF PINYIN
The pinyin system of romanisation of Chinese was devised in 1958 and used at first primarily as an aid to literacy. From January 1979 it was adopted as the standard method for use in foreign language publications in China.
Pinyin uses all the letters of the English alphabet, although V is only used for foreign or dialect words. The letters are pronounced approximately as in English with the following exceptions:
a
ai
ao
с
ch
as in far
as "y" in my
as "ow" in now
as "ts" in its
as in church
as "er" in her
as in rein
ei
i
there are two pronunciations:
1)
as "ea" in eat
2)
as in sir, in
syllables
beginning with
the consonants
ie
о
Ou
q
u
'c"
}
"ch", "r",
66.99
"sh", "z" and "zh"
,
,
as "ye" in yes
as "aw" in law
as "ow" in low
as "ch" in cheek
there are two pronunciations:
1)
as in too
2)
similar to the
X
N
zh
French "u" in tu
as "sh" in she
as "dz" in adze
as "j" in jump
The pinyin system of romanisation is used in this paper, except for cases where it remains customary to use the previous form, eg Peking (Beijing), and for some historical figures.
40