With the advent of writing in the Celestial Empire, a hieroglyphic system of writing the text was firmly established, because the Chinese alphabet as such does not exist. Usually, the pinyin method, created in the last century to transcribe characters into the Latin alphabet, falls under this concept.
Why the Chinese alphabet does not exist
To answer this question, one should turn to the definition. It says that the alphabet is a collection of characters in the writing system. It would seem, what's the catch?
Chinese writing is based on hieroglyphs that have a semantic meaning separate from other characters in the text and, in turn, consist of keys. With the latter, the situation is exactly the same. Moreover, the key can be used as an independent hieroglyph, i.e., a word.
The alphabet, however, implies the meaninglessness of a single letter symbol and a small number of established, unchangeable letters. The Chinese language, or Putonghua, has more than 50 thousand characters, taking into account various modifications, while their number is definitely unknown and is prone to increase.
What is Pinyin
Simply put, "pinyin" is a system of romanization for the language of the Celestial Empire or a way to write hieroglyphs by syllables. With its help, any word can be represented in Latin letters, which facilitates the understanding of the phonetic component.
Thus, it turns out that the Chinese alphabet does not exist, and applying this term to this collection of characters is nothing more than a common mistake. Nevertheless, because of the frequency of its use, it is sometimes necessary to reckon with it.
However, the question of how many letters in the Chinese alphabet does not have an answer for all the above reasons.
Pinyin Initials
As mentioned earlier, this system (hereinafter “the Chinese alphabet”) consists of Latin characters. Syllables mainly form consonants, vowels and their combinations. The pronunciation of the initials, like the finals, has a lot of nuances:
- For example, "m", "f", "s", "h" are similar to Russian "m", "f", "s" and "x".
- There are aspirated consonants ("p", "t", "k", "c", "sh", "ch"), which require a strong expiration when pronouncing.
- The “n” in “pinyin” is more likely alveolar, while the “l” and “j” are similar to the English reprimand.
- “q” reads “ts”, “x” resembles “ss”, and “z” and “zh” resemble “tsz” and “zh”.
- The consonants "b", "d", "g" are extremely difficult to pronounce correctly, because they are a cross between the Russian counterparts of these sonorous and deaf sounds.
- The "r" at the beginning of the word replaces the "g".
Finals
The Chinese alphabet (hieroglyphs are not included in it) also contains vowels called "finals". They often consist of diphthongs and obey the following pronunciation rules:
- "an", "en", "ao", "uo", "ou", "ei", "ai", "a" are transcribed as "an", "en", "ao", "wo", " oh, hey, ah and a respectively.
- Complex endings "ia", "ian", "iao", "iang", "ie", "iu", "in" are read as "I", "yan", "yao", "yang", "e" , y, yin.
- "i" is similar to Russian "and", but does not soften consonants. If it is the only vowel in a syllable, it is written as "yi".
- "y" is pronounced as "y" or "wu" (identical to the previous case).
- "er" replaces "er".
When the Romanization System is Used
As a rule, "pinyin", it is also the Chinese alphabet (hieroglyphs are replaced by syllables in Latin), is used as an auxiliary element for tourists in the form of signatures on various signs or in the presence of a rare sign in the text.
Romanization is also used to write messages on an English-language keyboard. As a rule, this is an automated process, and the typed pinyin transcription is independently converted into a hieroglyph.
The last, most popular option is intended for structuring information in lists and databases: it is much more advisable to break words into first syllables using transliteration into Latin. This will facilitate the search not only for foreigners, but also for the Chinese.
Pinyin as a means of learning a language
The Romanization system for the Latin alphabet contains 29 syllables and is used as an auxiliary step in the study of Chinese. It allows you to familiarize yourself with the correct reading and pronunciation of vowel tones, thanks to the presence of diacritics. In China, the study of "pinyin" is compulsory for international students and is included in the curriculum of all modern schools.
Often, the phrase "Chinese alphabet with translation" refers to the transcription of syllables for ease of pronunciation. Diacritical marks are present for the same purpose.
Tones
In Putonghua, each vowel has its own specific intonation.
The same syllables with different pronunciation can form words that are fundamentally different in meaning from each other. To do this, it is extremely important to master the tones - without them, language proficiency is impossible. Often a foreigner with an incorrectly set intonation is not understood by anyone and his speech is mistaken for some unknown dialect.
To avoid such a problem, pronunciation should be studied directly with the teacher. Naturally, the Chinese alphabet with the Russian translation will not help here (transcription does not convey diacritics) and you will have to turn directly to the "pinyin" system.
There are four tones in total:
- High smooth.
- Ascending from medium to high.
- Low with a further decrease and subsequent increase to a medium tone.
- High with a drop.
Video lessons or a teacher will help to understand them, but the latter, as mentioned earlier, is preferable.
In conclusion about the Chinese alphabet
Returning to the topic of the Celestial Empire, it is worth noting that Chinese, like other languages with hieroglyphic writing, is not too similar to European.
Its features preclude the existence of a standard alphabet. Moreover, early attempts to replace the usual way of writing text to letter combinations quickly failed. Simply put, such methods went out of use in a short time and are unlikely to be reborn again.