Pinyin Basics

Ok..so I'm sitting at home alone...I want to learn the basic Mandarin phonics..but if I say just one sound, who will know if I am right or wrong? I do not want to start a bad habit, mispronouncing a basic sound the wrong way now, which could lead to a lifetime of mispronunciation and some real serious frustration later on. It is so much easier to perfect something at the beginning than to have to adjust and change habits later. So..what can we do...here are three ideas:

First, books! So what if people "don't read anymore"?...we do. 'Nuff said. Now I have half a bookshelf of Chinese books that I have slowly collected over time. Some adult level, some beginner level, some children's books, some books for learners of Korean and the Chinese they would benefit from (Korean being 70% directly from Chinese-think English from Latin, but 10% more!). So, we can read the books, most of them have a pronunciation guide in the front. Many will offer Mandarin-English equivalents. 'a' in Mandarin sounds like the 'a' in 'hat'. 'b' in Mandarin sounds like the 'b' in 'baby'. Such and so forth... Not bad, but I still cannot hear anything, so can I be positive it is correct. Now my 'o' may sound different than your 'o' mom...we might have slightly different dialects between the two of us. So how could we get a more definitive answer...

Our second option, on-line learning sites! Do a google search for learning Chinese on-line and viola! hundreds and thousands of sites. Click and peruse at your leisure and you can find the entire gamut of useful, useless, well thought out, thoughtless, University projects, some Chinese guy in Brooklyn's project, classy design, trashy sites, etc... It can be hit or miss, and many have endless dead links and other gaps in the website. However, some of the sites have audio links, Chinese calligraphy flashes, and a lot more interactive features to use. Pretty good, and let's save and share the best that we find. But is there something even more direct for us to master the phonics and basic pinyin 'alphabet' and sounds.

Our third, but not final, option, Youtube 'learn to speak Mandarin Chinese and Pinyin' video clips! Yes, a simple search will return such classics as:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9Ayvjy-Dgs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dstZmHpOa48
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTbiLcsD1A&feature=related

Cheesy? Check! Slightly ridiculous? Check-Check! Childish and meant for kids a quarter of our age? CHECK-CHECK-CHECK-CHECK-CHECK!!!!!

But effective, I am already getting a hang of the simple vowels, and even starting to hear the differences between z, c, s, j...so subtle and difficult, we really need to hear a native Mandarin speaker produce the sounds.

So, here are three options, but as I said, they are not by any means definitive. What else can you think of where we could really benefit and master these basic pronunciations and pinyin sounds? Let me know!

Ready...set...let's go!!!