Ming Tak Chinese School

(Correspondence address) 61 Burdon Lane Sutton Surrey SM2 7BY

Telephone: 07961 150833 (8pm to 10pm) www.mingtak.webs.com Head Teacher: Mong Mai Email. [email protected]

Basic principles Modern Cantonese and Mandarin are monosyllabic languages. Cantonese writing uses traditional characters, whereas Mandarin writes in simplified forms. The pronunciations are different but are characterised in tones. Cantonese known as Jyutping 粵拼粵拼粵拼 and has 6 tone or syllables, whilst Mandarin is Pinyin 拼音拼音拼音 and uses 4 distinctive tone or syllables. The two different systems are explained below, and these are just basis. There are exceptions. Cantonese structures It is based on a romanization system, using international phonetic alphabets to represent the sounds. There are 6 tones represented by the number at the end of the syllables, tone 1 to 6. Each Cantonese word are broken down into the initial sound, the final sound, and the tone number. So, the word mother 媽媽媽 Maa1; horse 馬馬馬 is represented by Maa5. The initial sound is “M”, and “aa” is the final sound followed by different tone numbers. The basis tone number can be illustrated graphically as shown.

Tone1 High Tone 2 Mid to high Tone 3 middle Tone 4 Mid to low Tone 5 Low to mid Tone 6 Low

We have no phonetic on words in the textbooks we designed. This is designed so the students can learn the words by memorising them and not relying on the phonetics. However, at the back new word pages, all words are represented by the tonal system or Jyutping. This will help the student to learn the Cantonese pronunciation.

School address : Glenthorne High School , 270 Sutton Common Road, Sutton, Surrey SM39PS (Saturday 10.30 am - 12.50 pm) Ming Tak Chinese School is a Registered Company in England & Wales Number 3007829 Register office: 61 Burdon Lane, Cheam, Surrey, SM2 7BY Ming Tak Chinese School

(Correspondence address) 61 Burdon Lane Sutton Surrey SM2 7BY

Telephone: 07961 150833 (8pm to 10pm) www.mingtak.webs.com Head Teacher: Mong Mai Email. [email protected]

Mandarin structures

Mandarin sounds known as Pinyin have 4 basis tones for A, E, I, O, U are as below. Pingyin or syllable transcribes the Chinese characters (Hanzi), so they can be pronounced by standard international phonetic alphabets. Mandarin also has an initial sound and a final sound with a tone. Consider the word 你你你, nĭ or you. Blow is an illustration of the sound structure. There are many dialects of Mandarin. The Pinyin or technique we follow in our school is based on Beijing dialect. These are represented by the following graphical symbols. Chinese characters are often made up of single component. Eg. The character 包包包 means package or to wrap and pronounces as Bāo . This is the basis component. If it includes other elements such as 抱抱抱 or Bào is to hold, 饱饱饱 or Băo is to eat till full or full up, 跑跑跑 or Páo is to run. In our Mandarin textbooks, all characters are accompanied with Pinyin, guided by the teachers to help the students to pronounce them probably and correctly.

You 4 basis Tones for A, E, I, O, U 你 A and à, ă, ā, á Initial Tone E and è, ě, ē, é

I and ì, ĭ, ī, í NĬ O and ò, ŏ, ō, ó Final U and ù, ŭ, ū, ú Syllable