In the Imperial Palace, Béijing Béijing metro station sign, including characters and pinyin (the latter without tones) Special attention to the rising tone, Chéngda First, letters w and y, which do appear initially in pinyin (e.g., the numbers w1 ‘five’ and yi ‘one’), are treated as special cases of medial u and i, respectively, in initial position. Thus, instead of ‘i’, one finds yi; instead of ‘t’, wii; instead of ‘ié’, yé; instead of ‘ud’, wo; etc. This will be discussed again in detail later. Second, the vowels conventionally placed with the different classes of initials to make them pronounceable turn out to be some of those that have quite idio- syncratic values for speakers of English. Thus, the o in the first line of the table below is not pronounced like the English long vowel ‘o’ but more like the vowel sound in the word ‘paw’; the e in the second line is pronounced [uh]; the i in the third and fourth lines represents a continuation of the initial into a buzz (e.g., zi [dzz]; zhi [jrr]), but in the fifth line it represents the more expected [ee] (e.g., ji [jee]). The vowel sounds will be discussed in §o.4 below, but for now, you can use the hints provided in the far right column of the chart and imitate your teacher or the audio. You should learn to declaim (for sound) and write (for symbol) this table, line by line, as soon as possible: bo po mo fo, de te ne le, etc. Tigju Lane, Kanming (now demolished): the sign reads zhi shéng yige hdizi hao ‘just have one child’. Not only is the pinyin written without tones or word breaks, but shéng is written ‘shen’ and ge is written ‘gou’, unintentionally reflecting local pronunciation. Beijing road sign The ten celestial stems (tidangan) 1.4 Stative verbs Fe a ESE IEE EEE ESE SSIES Just as English sometimes makes use of letters rather than numbers to indicate a sequence of items, so Chinese sometimes makes use of a closed set of words with fixed order known as shigan ‘the ten stems’ or tidngan ‘the celestial stems’ for counting purposes. The ten stems have an interesting history, which will be discussed in greater detail along with information on the Chinese calendar in a later unit. For now, they will be used in much the same way that, in English, Roman numerals or letters of the alphabet are used to mark subsections of a text, or turns in a dialogue. The first four or five of the ten are much more common than the others, simply because they occur early in the sequence. (Chinese people will be impressed if you can recite all ten!) With V.., the plain negative with bu usually indicates intention. 1.7.4. Summary of le patterns As shown, the characters that represent surnames also represent words with Cover the pinyin and check your pronunciation of the following phrases. 8.11.1 Pronunciation practice
![First, letters w and y, which do appear initially in pinyin (e.g., the numbers w1 ‘five’ and yi ‘one’), are treated as special cases of medial u and i, respectively, in initial position. Thus, instead of ‘i’, one finds yi; instead of ‘t’, wii; instead of ‘ié’, yé; instead of ‘ud’, wo; etc. This will be discussed again in detail later. Second, the vowels conventionally placed with the different classes of initials to make them pronounceable turn out to be some of those that have quite idio- syncratic values for speakers of English. Thus, the o in the first line of the table below is not pronounced like the English long vowel ‘o’ but more like the vowel sound in the word ‘paw’; the e in the second line is pronounced [uh]; the i in the third and fourth lines represents a continuation of the initial into a buzz (e.g., zi [dzz]; zhi [jrr]), but in the fifth line it represents the more expected [ee] (e.g., ji [jee]). The vowel sounds will be discussed in §o.4 below, but for now, you can use the hints provided in the far right column of the chart and imitate your teacher or the audio. You should learn to declaim (for sound) and write (for symbol) this table, line by line, as soon as possible: bo po mo fo, de te ne le, etc.](https://figures.academia-assets.com/34892041/table_003.jpg)
