Mandarin Syllable Chart Homepage

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This is a brief introduction of The Mandarin Syllable Chart. You may discover some fascinating facts in the Chart. For instance, while some syllables carry a large number of characters, some only bear one or two characters. You may observe some homophones not only share the same sound, but also have certain part of writings in common. Those facts will help you remember a lot of the characters and surely it is a fun way to learn a foreign language.

The Chinese Characters

A few, except those good for nothing Chinese language teachers, loves them. They are numerous. Even they are something good, you just can't have too many good things. How many of them exactly? No one knows. A average handbook-size dictionary may collect some 10,000 characters. A "knock you out" heavy weight shall deliver a blow of some more than 100,000 of them.

They did sound like themselves

Common wisdom tells you that a Chinese character does not show its own pronunciation. Wrong! Only about 200 of the so called pictographical characters survived today. The rest of them, generally speaking, all bear some kind of mark for their pronunciation. Unfortunately, time has not been kind to the language and the people who speak or spoke the tongue changed also. Therefore today we can not no longer rely on the characters to identify their pronunciations. But the Chart can still give you some remaining to wonder and to explore and you can find some links which lead you to a better understanding of the language.

Here Comes The Pinyin

The first attempt to romanize the Chinese language was made in Ming Dynasty, about 17th century. The man who pioneered the project named Mattio Ricci, a Jusuit from Italy. A remarkable man of his own right, contributed a great deal to China and the Chinese culture and left an enduring legacy to the Chinese people. Yet Pinyin (literally means "combining sound", for each monosyllable combines a consonant and a vowel.) had not become the standard Chinese phonetic system until the early 50's in 20th century.

Characters and Pinyin

Every attempt to replace pinyin with Chinese characters has failed so far. I personally thought that it is not due to the irreplaceable value of the Chinese characters but the foundamental attribute of the language. The Chinese language is very much a "visual" instead of an "audial" language, so to speak. By observing the chart you will see there are so many homophones and only characters tell the differences. We can certainly communicate by only using pinyin, but only at a basic level. A great deal of expressive information will be lost should we abandon the characters completely. People of different dialects even different languages can communicate by using the characters.

The Dilemma

It is rather troublesome for anyone who are learning the language. Pinyin so far remains an assistant tool for early learning and the promotional device for the official speech--the Mandarin or Common Speech. So, you should master pinyin in order to study the characters. But at the same time you shall never rely upon pinyin as if it was the Chinese language.

Sound
VS
Character
Where are the meanings? Are they in the sound or in the writing? Scholars haven't made up their mind yet. There are quite a lot of papers on this issue. Let me put it in a Chinese term: when loaded on an ox, the papers can made the animal sweat like a horse; when stored in a room, the pile can reach the ceiling.

Let's see a typical example. Here we have three characters all pronounced "ren":

  the first means "people, human, man",

  and the second means "benevolence, kindness",

  and the third "tolerance".

Why they all pronounce the same? Where are the meanings? To see the interesting argument, please click HERE.