The main purpose of the Mandarin Syllable Chart is to give students a clear view of the language in pronunciations and commonly used characters and the relationship between them.

The Chart comprises two major parts: the 400 monosyllables and the list of commonly used characters.

What's in the squares?

Each square contains one monosyllable and information related to the syllable. For example, the syllable of "gei" shows that there is only one character in Mandarin has the sound (the number in the bottom left corner of the square) and there is only one tone in the sound (the number in the bottom right corner of the square). You can see the character of gei in the up right corner of the square.

               

What's in the list?

In the list of commonly used characters, you will see the characters arranged according to their tone variations. The small digits represent different tones and the digit 0 means neutral tone and the digit 5 means the character has all five tone variations. If students know one of them, then they shall be able to pronounce all of them.

The characters arranged not only according to their tone variations but also their writing features. This is particularly useful for recognizing and understanding characters. Here is an example: the character "ping". The five character we see here share the same sound and tone, but have different meanings. The first one means flat. The second has a speech radical and means comment. The third has a grass radical and means apple. The fourth has a grass and a water radical, meaning duckweed, what a clue! The fifth has a earth radical and means a patch of flat land.