0:16 for 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 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 pinion 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 impr improve your pronunciation please download the PDF in
1:02 the description below which also includes an extensive collection of audio files that comes free with this master class 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 pinion 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
1:48 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 pinion uses all of the letters of the English alphabet except for V which is replaced by the umlout u sound which we'll of course get into and fully Master very shortly opinion 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 I was not made with the purpose of helping us learn Chinese it was made for the
2:34 purpose of transcribing names and for helping Chinese children learn Chinese faster all Chinese kids when they're in school will start off with pinion and then gradually work their way towards learning characters and opinion 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 final and tone the only exceptions are this top line of the pinion chart here
3:20 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 opinion initials first there are 21 of them along the left side of the pinion 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
4:06 MFL 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 Walkin 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 n u
4:54 the umlout U and here are all the simple finals they just use the individual letters themselves and compound finals are just combinations of these 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 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 so 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
5:39 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 okay it's just a matter of how you approach them and 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 highest point in your personal vocal range so for me for example if I said the word
6:26 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 that'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 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 um um 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
7:13 sing when they speak right and go above what they used to or below what they used to as if they're straining themselves so I'm going to introduce the tones to you now I want you to try and avoid going above or below your vocal range just say in a way that's comfortable to you that is is the key to this so first first tone we call this the singing tone and here it is ma ma you know I'm not going 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 steady pace and you can feel free to pause it replay certain
7:58 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 don't please don't obsess over that and be like oh was mine almost as high as my first first tone Oh was it above
8:44 or below my vocal range maybe it was 80% toward 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 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
9:32 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 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 goes down croak and then it just dies off doesn't do anything else it's quite short and it's at the lowest point of your vocal range m not right trying to push it down just m that's why we call it the zombie tone because it's almost like a zombie saying Brains Brains ma ma and finally we've got the
10:18 fourth tone which is something like this m Ma I would say it goes even slightly above first tone but definitely at the limit of your vocal range and then straight down M 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 ma 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 Ma ma but here's the thing it can be low ma
11:04 or it can be high M 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 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 like that but again I don't want you to obsess about where the fifth tone is or any of these tones
11:49 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 Master Class 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 finished watching now that we've got to grips
12:34 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 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
13:21 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
14:07 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 a 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 C don't say a right it's it's a it's a 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 the video so here's a great word in Chinese that uses this simple
14:53 final a mama M so we have a first tone and a fifth tone Ma and you notice that the contrarian fifth tone is coming in there it's low because ma is high ma ma m what about father or dad so we got the fourth tone ba with the fifth tone at the Enda this is really common with family member names by the way the characters are doubled up and the second one is a fifth tone B he she or it in Chinese are pronounced exactly the same but they have different Chinese characters t t afraid in Chinese
15:38 p p another fourth tone there to practice spicy la la and finally question mark in Chinese M just a fifth tone this makes a statement into a yes no question just add it on the end M we would never do that on its own by the way so let's look at an example sentence and prti practice some tones in combination at the same time he is afraid of spicy Ma 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 are can you handle it basically and it's very common where I spent a lot of years in China chungu because chungu is in suchan and suchan is famous for spicy
16:23 food and in Chinese when we answer a yes no question we don't really have a word for yes or no we 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 T So T 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
17:09 only slightly different let me show you what I mean hungry in Chinese is so it's like the uh in put and the uh in Du combine 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 not it's barely moving almost like a ventrus dummy operator it's slightly moving a little bit but it's incidental so how would you say he's hungry T now usually we would add a l on the end and this L this character here it indicates two things change
18:00 or completion so he wasn't hungry and now he is it's a change of state so so this pronunciation with a fifth tone it's just the first half of the previous uh just without the uh on the end so it's just a is hungry it's really common with 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 you know or a jaw moving like you know like try not to overdo it try and
18:46 imitate me exactly and just try and relax your mouth throughout all this it's going to it's going to be easier said than done of course 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 C it's going to help us practice that third tone that zombie tone as well so how would you think he would say she's thirsty so you have the zomie tone and then the high fifth tone because it's the opposite it's a contrarian right and while we're here practicing e 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
19:32 which is older brother so we have the two different e here again the long one and the short one good good and we can add in the most common Chinese character in existence du 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 it it makes it possessive so T again D is low T is high now how do you think he would say his or her older brother is hungry how would you make this into a
20:18 yes no question another particle that we could add on to the end of a statement is n with that fifth tone e n and it means what about what about the previous thing I just said so m means what about M 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 these initials are already done because
21:05 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 uh there's no voice behind them whereas they are voiced in English let me show you what I mean so B in Chinese is more like the p in spit spit it doesn't have a b behind it like it would have in English bit just a bit there's a m there's a vibration going on all the way through the sound whereas there Chinese there isn't b b it's like a more of a poppy sort of sound D in Chinese is more like the T in the
21:52 English word store store it's not heavily voiced like in Engish Engish do 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 Gil Gil 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 it's more like that than it is the B DG next up let's look at TP and K TP and K in Chinese are much more
22:37 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 T ta and tap tap and you can notice there's a different amount of air hitting your hand same way the Chinese for afraid of p p versus the English pat pat p Pat or you can hear that breath coming out versus kit kit and finally we've got the H
23:25 which is rather unique so the H in Chinese is kind of like how I hear Scottish people say lo lo they got a slight scratch to it so for example which is drink in Chinese 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 finals 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 or or awesome right sorry Americans I apologize I tried hard to think of an
24:11 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 or now this is your first opinion Oddity because technically when you see these spellings with just p o p o m o fo o in the pinion chart they are technically in the O simple final o section but they're not pronounced that way they're pronounced uo and we'll cover that in just a moment let's look at the simple final first it's just pronounced or and the only Chinese character that you'll get if you just type in O by itself into your dictionary will be this one it's just the word for o in Mandarin or or and aside from the B po m o fo
24:59 that I just pointed out there's also l o which does actually have the original o pronunciation which is law law it's a particle that you put on the end of something to sort of show enthusiasm or happiness about something just for example sh like it's raining right so instead of just saying sh right it's now raining you say sh so that's just that's it that's how law is used so that's the basic o sound but as I mentioned when it's b o p o m o fo o it is pronounced with a u sound and we haven't covered you yet so let's skip ahead quickly cover that 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 o o but
25:49 when by itself this sound o it's spelled w and this is another one of those opinion Oddities that we have to just get used to so if you look at the top of the pinion 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 pinion thought hm 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 we see here the U in Chinese just by itself the simple final U is spelled w and all of the sounds to the
26:34 right here should technically be spelled u a or uo 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 l u and we'll get to those in just a moment so U is pronounced 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
27:20 co with a fourth tone Co five in Chinese is you notice that it's by itself so I'm saying the full tone or most of the time however in reality it would be just a 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 pinion chart all these four sounds although they're spelled with just an O I want you to imagine that they're spelled uo here they are I don't know why the guy who made pinion didn't just put them over here in the uo section that would have been way better in my opin 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 is this is not this is
28:13 pronounced this one is pronounced poor poor and this one is pronounced more more and this one four four War so let's do a key word really common word for uo or wo War means I or me how do you think you would say I'm hungry with that short zombie third turn 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
28:58 the EA in t e e now there is also the fake I it's another opinion odity 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 O the U pronunciation the simple final there it has a slight different spelling when it's on its own just that e pronunciation it's spelled y I still pronounced the same these two things just spelled differently so again just like the 's in this section were replaced with W's at the beginning this
29:45 section all replaced with y's and by itself as you can see here it's spell y i but these two are pronounced identically they are the same thing so the most common word with the pronunciation e is number one in Chinese e and it can also mean uh or an depending on the context u in Chinese is or if you're just saying it by itself how would you ask are you hungry now that we're on to 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 Lang language but do not worry there are some very simple ways of saying these like a
30:33 native speaker with minimal effort so all of these problem initials combined 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 center 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 ji Qi and XI in chines all you have to do is put your tip of your tongue behind your bottom teeth like
31:22 this so it's almost like giving yourself a kind of speech impas 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 G whiz or you know the letter g g now try saying the word chi as in the first part of the word cheese now try she as in female she so let's use the word how many to master the ji so remember keep that tongue there
32:09 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 fix throughout the entire sound so is that third tone fifth tone combination again g t actually means how many and G 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
32:56 t t 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 high low first tone f t next we have soft gentle air is just continuously flowing the entire time at the same speed it's not explosive like the QI sh and this is the surname of the current leader of China president C so that is JQ 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
33:41 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 SI Z hii Chi Shi r i so for all 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 end up getting confused and trying to pronounce them with the ye sound so let's first jump into Zed H CH H sh and R so the tongue position to pronounce all these is very similar to that of garage
34:29 that garage very similar in fact you might it 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 ey out of your mind forget that the I exists and instead replace each eye 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 or you just it's just a just the
35:16 sound that's it the only thing that makes it hard is the mental idea of saying a sound like this in it meaning anything from uh an English speaker's perspective so let's practice The Zed hi with the word to point in Chinese which is a third tone J or J but most commonly to point so this zh is just like a g next is to eat with the first tone remember forget this I exists just think of it is three Rs what about to be in Chinese another
36:03 incredibly common character a common way of showing agreement in Chinese is how do you think you would say I am her father taba 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
36:51 [Music] date people struggle with this a lot because first of all they struggle with with the r and they don't know the difference between r i and re e it's confusing but now you know that the r is super easy and it's just a sound just add hungry on the end and now you've got hot in Chinese so that's now let's move on to the final problem initials Zed 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 got pretty big top teeth so maybe it's different for you but this
37:38 is how you pronounce them the zi is just like the DS in kids so maybe you can try saying K there like two separate syllables k k that is the zedi 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 is CI again for get that I exists it's just a c sound so it's like the TS
38:26 in cats but it has a voice that comes in after the initial sound so it's so there's like an explosion of air again very similar to except has a voice behind it from the beginning all right so zedi 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
39:13 Buzzy sound at the end so it's more like a s z sound like that so let's quickly practice these H is Chinese character in Chinese word in Chinese is so the tone for the CI doesn't exist until that sound comes in and then we have four 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
40:00 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 opinion 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 with the O pronunciation and third tone these three things e and third tone they carry with them tone Sandy so in certain situations or certain contexts tones will change
40:46 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 uh 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 bull first because it is the easiest so bu is inherently a fourth tone but when it precedes another fourth tone it becomes a second tone so it's not 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 with a second tone if you want to say something is not
41:34 the case you don't say you say and ya is to want in Chinese you don't say Bo You Say Bo Bo 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 bull taken care of bull is really straightforward e is still straightforward but it just has a few more rules to it so e is the number one in Chinese or a or an depending on the context so whenever e is a number one it is pronounced first time but in all other situations it's
42:19 pronounced different so when it's number one as in usually the numeral one so for example numerals eay Ling so that's 1001 e Ling is 101 Joy is Monday literally week one week number one and then one month e is January so this in all these situations e is pronounced e with a first tone as well as the first the this character signifies ordinal numbers like this so d e first now before a fourth tone just like with b e becomes a second tone and again this
43:06 makes the language flow better so e means a or one of something it's actually pronounce or sometimes in this case the G is pronounced as a fifth tone so it's depending on where it is how fast you're speaking and all that sort of stuff is a fourth tone so e is actually in this case case or one half right just like B and the final rule for e 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 but actually it's same with this one it's not
43:51 it's it's not isier it's e and Fin 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 this is 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 and that's why often when you just say in the right way it's actually quite
44:38 diff like it's quite easy to mess it up right it's a very basic word very common word but that's often why if you say like Chinese people wow the Chinese is really good you know like are you just you making fun of me I just said the word hello but like no if you get this right it can be quite impressive right howo which could mean a long time or depending on the characters could mean good alcohol so that is tone Sandy so just 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
45:23 this pronunciation is I guess new but really there is no u in English there is an u 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 ji Qi and XI for d t and c just behind your bottom teeth here U and slightly purse lips oh don't move your lips don't go new you're saying the word new please don't do that and I hope this 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
46:11 itself U is written as y u so just as with the E and the U pronunciations the I and the U the U also has this odd spelling thing so when it's just the see 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 umlout U at the beginning on its own which would 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 pronounce
46:57 them okay so here's a really good word with just the by itself fish second tone Tong behind the teeth put a q in front of it a sound Tong behind the bottom teeth and you've got Go in Chinese with a fourth tone ch ch how would you ask are you going CH now this is a new sort of way of asking questions in Chinese where you add the B but with a fifth tone a neutral tone in the middle and you double it up two and that's exactly the same thing as asking ma with the question mark Ma at
47:43 the end it's the same thing it's just a different way of doing it you 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 ab broughtup so are you going or aren't you come on we're off is it so is that the case not it's like with a 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 or finals simple finals
48:28 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 opinion chart first off we have which is just a plus o a
49:13 o and here's a word that uses the pronunciation Le is Austria put an H in front of it and you've got good or okay in Chinese how or how if you were going to say it on its own which with this particular word quite often you do how someone makes a suggestion say hey let's do this thing you might just say how and of course put a u in front of that and you've got hello in Chinese you good remember the third tone third tone rule this tone becomes a second tone what about to know in
50:00 Chinese I love this one of my favorite tone combinations it's like car driving off a cliff says I know what oh and here's a common thing that people say in China like Roger that it's not very common in English I guess uh 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 say when someone gives you a piece of information the L is like a change or 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 got it so that's Al done let's move on to I so that's a and e i i a and
50:52 just like with o you'll always see the tone Mark whether that's first tone second tone 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 vow in the compound sort of combo that is the one with the tone marker the best word to learn for the I pronunciation just that AI on its own would be love I love you would be I and how would you say I love you remember we would change this to a in reality but I'm not going to signify that here we don't do that at Mandarin blueprint we don't rewrite the tones to
51:38 make things clearer for Learners and we used to do this but we stopped doing it and I don't know some tuts 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 ah 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 opinion in the real world is like this it doesn't show you the tone marks
52:25 so I don't want to show you the toe marks either I just want you to get used to it right and it's not that many rules to get used to I think we think that overall this is the best approach longterm and we at Mander blueprint we're all about long-term success with this language so just remember to watch out for that it's actually this is a good chance for you to practice the third second tone pair which I think is one of the hardest ones another good word with the I pronunciation is which means well located I guess the closest thing is I guess at on in problem is D the way it's used in Chinese isn't really used in English in the same way right or it doesn't really
53:10 exist in English and I'll show you what I mean so say is where well technically n on its own is where too 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 where is the car you could say it's located here but again we don't say located here in English we don't use that day 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 d coming up so that's a sorted now let's go to
53:57 an an and this is a nasal final a plus really simple and 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 are wondering and but if you say it with a fourth tone it becomes dark and in Chinese means slow man man and
54:48 how the word for good in Chinese actually can be translated as very you can put it before an adjective like a describing word word like slow and it becomes very slow so he is slow or he is very slow three in Chinese [Music] is again we got the what we call the universal measure word here G there are different measure words for different objects but G is the universal measure word so if when you're just starting out you can just use G 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 G now the final a final is and that is pronounced differently as
55:35 you probably just heard Ang so it's pronounced more like again sorry how British people how I would say the word father ah it's pretty close to that right so a 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 Ang pronunciation so I chose to share with you Henry in Chinese which is just remember when you're saying this Ang sound the a the sort of cat a that we've covered so far is more like a smile say a Your corners of your mouth are going outwards whereas Ang is more of a relaxed your jaws sort of opening down and your jaws here are kind of
56:23 relaxed so this is how English names are transcribed or transliterated I can't remember the actual which one of those words is correct but Jonathan for example is John or Jonathan Luke could be a couple of different things L with two fourth tones or L fourth tone third tone I met a guy called L and some of my hilarious Northern Chinese friends would refer to me as which is a very different meaning that only native speakers will get and likely find funny next bang so put a b in front of Ang and you've got help in Chinese bang bang bang is help me that's
57:09 it we are now done with a like fully done like all the a pronunciations are finished now we haven't gone through every single a pronunciation in the entire pinion 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 10 e e and the I is just pronounced like i e so it's a a just
57:54 like the word vain in English and really there aren't many words in Chinese with this particular e 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 hey that's when someone calls your name and you want to express that yes I'm here I hear 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 z h in front of a and you've got J or J which means this well technically
58:42 it's this one now you could say it 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 du is formal but it's just J is the more casual version so J and same logic applies to that in Chinese n or nag nag again same logic nag is absolutely fine but Nega is just slightly more casual more of a spoken twang to it Nea is also so like a a way
59:28 of saying uh let me think kind of like a way of fing they call it filler words in Chinese right so you can say as you're thinking of something to say you can be like ner ner 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 with using your sort of native way of saying uh or um Chinese people might feel awkward and they oh I'll I'll interrupt him or her and I'll uh 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 uh like you say
1:00:14 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 which in Chinese which is so it's like Nega which is that but with a third tone NE n or nag nag same logic applied there too so that's a let's go on to and in this case the best way to pronounce this like a native is to think of that is to know that the E here is just like the fifth tone sound the U inut just with an N on the
1:01:02 end now fourth tone would be n 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 ba n in banana the way we say that banana banana B really quick and really short with a fourth tone two really important characters plural for people War so w is I is we T is he she or it and Tam is they and for this the character is the male T Tam this is another one that's super common I mean all the words
1:01:48 I'm covering today are super common but this is like super super common so so technically the main meaning of 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 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 something like that but this is a really good little phrase to master this pronunciation you notice when I said that quickly here's another little pronunciation tip for you when I said that quickly this n just disappears just like
1:02:36 it would in English words like government or environment we just kind of miss out the NS I don't know what this is called exactly if I was a an actual linguist if I'd studied this for years and years maybe I'd be able to tell you or if I spent five minutes researching it right now on chat gbt but I'm not going to so this is a 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 oh and I guess this n disappears too really the only n you can hear is the final one next up so e pronounced exactly the same way with the sort of fifth tone e pronunciation of put with an NG on the
1:03:23 end good word for this one is sh CH the only word I could find with just EG pronunciation in Mandarin is the Reigns 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 EG and you've got sh this character which means to be born or life then day so life day or born day which means birthday there's that again good opportunity to practice that as well as that tricky first tone fourth tone next up is R this is the final e final and it is a wild card if you check
1:04:10 out ER on the pinion 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 Ira 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 add a second tone you've got AR and this means child such as in the word for sun as in Sons or daughter it's a second tone fifth tone combination is a good opportunity to practice the u sound and the third second tone combination which again
1:04:56 pretty tricky new if you wanted to say this is my daughter in Chinese you would say 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 J you only use J with g j or NE or n those three sort of more colloquial Expressions the a pronunciation you can only use them like that with the G but if you want to say like this is you have to say you cannot say J
1:05:42 don't say that doesn't make any sense and this is used for words like n which means where and speaking of thega situation R is often added to the end of certain words to make them sound more casual too so Nali is where in Chinese but if you said Nar that's also where but just a slightly more casual version and you notice it's not written like new new 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 one is to play but you could also say war with the r on the
1:06:29 end totally up to you if you want to say one 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 got to cover om and OU G is just o the awesome o the o with NG on the end really good one to learn for this is literally middle or country Middle Country so if you wanted to say I live in China you would
1:07:15 say I live located in and all it's just o with o the cool u o o oh one of my favorite vegetables in the entire world that is impossible to find in England apparently unless you go to like chinat town in London or something but it's Lotus root it's absolutely delicious all all it's third tone now a friend of ours who's hilarious says she doesn't like to eat all because it makes her ugly and and here's why she says eat all Lotus fruit ch ch is uh
1:08:04 Chinese for ugly so she thinks that if she eats Lotus fruit all she will become T ugly that's why she doesn't eat it true story next if you put a z or Zed in front of O you've got Z remember it's that not Z it's not Z Z like a buzz it's slightly explosive right so it's a now can mean to walk it can also mean to leave somewhere and it can mean to die depending on the context and don't worry the context is obvious which one you mean you know so obviously if you're saying that means I'm off I'm gone I'm off see obviously
1:08:52 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
1:09:38 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 E and A which is e a ya and as you can probably yes it's that a pronunciation the cat a when just on its own this yah pronunciation is just on its own without any other initials in front of it this final will be spelled ya a and the most common word with this pronunciation is most likely a this character here yah means excitement and a also means excitement it's like a way of adding excitement to what you're saying so particle a modal particle it changes the mood what you're saying usually you just use one of these but if you use both of
1:10:24 them together Aya Aya 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 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 which means home how do you think you'd say I'm at home next up which is e a o e o ya and this will be spelled y a o went
1:11:11 on its own so for example ya which we've covered earlier already means to want in Chinese ya and to say don't want you just put a in front of it Bo and remember it's not it's so if you wanted to ask which one do you want you would say you want which which one or is fine too and to answer that you would say I want that one or now put a J in front of Yao and it turns back to an i AO spelling and Z is what you get would be to call or be called most
1:11:58 commonly it's how to introduce yourself Luke so just put your name after it your name next up we have and here it is the pronunciation E when it's on its own it's spelled ye e such as with also in Chinese which is a third tone yeah yeah 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 yeah me too I also am and it's just a good way of agreeing with someone so
1:12:45 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 yes like me too he's slow too or he's also slow man notice that with English you can say to at the end you can never put the year at the end it's always before the thing put a b in front of yeah and add a second tone and you got don't in Chinese which is actually the shortened version of boy it's like the shortened version
1:13:33 if you like it's more colloquial casual way of saying don't do something so buah as well as don't want it's also when you tell someone not to do something don't blah blah blah so is like a sort of these two words squished together to make don't go you don't go and if you put an X or the the tongue behind the bottom teeth in front of yeah and add a fourth turnone and then double it up you've got 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 Mama or Baba or G so s is more like thanks
1:14:21 thank you the full word is s 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 sh it's more common next up we've got you and this is another opinion audity we haven't had any Oddities for a while have we so this is technically it's i o u e o but the O is deleted for some reason I don't know why exactly but maybe it's a save space so if you check the pinion chart you'll see that when it's on its own y u is how it's spelled and the most common word in the entire Chinese language most likely for y y u is with a third tone and it's
1:15:09 pronounced yo 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 boooo please never do that you say may Mayo May has a second tone Mayo so how would you ask do you have a car you have car 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 yo and that's when it's absolutely fine to use
1:15:54 the full third tone Y what about if you want to say I also have or yes me too yo me too I also have and here we've got an example of multiple thir tones now we talks about a rule of two thir tones together right this one becomes a second tone but what about if you 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 like is fine like double it up double second tone Soo right with a third tone at the end or you could
1:16:40 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 a 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 fluently within just a few short years
1:17:27 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 was also had the meaning of there is and there are so y can also mean there is or there are so you would say draw a sh on the table or literally table on your there is a cat that is the Chinese word order for this sort of
1:18:13 thing and again don't get scared by the word order it is different but the 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 Le which is six that's number six in Chinese so it goes 1 2 3 4 5 six 7 like that eight because it looks like number eight in Chinese that's the character n and then 10 or 10 like that le le is a
1:19:01 way of saying awesome the number 666 in Chinese while it represents the devil and uh hell and all that sort of bad stuff in the west 666 is like the it's like really cool it's like the the best number ever Leo and it's nothing to do with the Bible or God or the devil or
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