Chinese Pronunciation
Vowels

Here is a repeat of the vowel paragraph of our Pronunciation of Chinese page, with English (or German) keywords and Chinese character examples. We rely on allophones in two cases, -i (as in both "Lisa" and "list") and -u (as in both "rune" and "could"). There is only one word in standard English which has the sound we write with letter -o, and it is colloquial: "gonna" [a contraction of "going to"].

li "strength" -i "Lisa

-i "list"

-r "fur"

-z "adz"

lu #road" -u "rune

-u "could"

lw "law" -w "über"

-e "get"

-v "gut"

-o "gonna"

-ae [æ] "fat "

-a "father"

-ar "far"

[no "-oe" sound]


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21 Aug 2001 / Contact The Project / Exit to Chinese Index Page