PHONOLOGY OF MANDARIN CHINESE: A COMPARISON OF PINYIN AND IPA

Abstract

Chinese language has an ideographic and logographic writing system, and it has always been a difficult problem to correctly represent the phonology of Chinese characters (syllables and words). The Pinyin system uses Roman alphabets to spell the sounds of Chinese characters, but it was not designed as an accurate phonetic transcription system. The Pinyin system is simple and easy to learn, but its simplicity also causes the problem that many different phonemes have to be represented by the same letter. The phonetic transcription system widely accepted by linguists is the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabets), a system designed for transcribing the phonemes of the world’s languages. To accurately capture Mandarin Chinese phonology, this study compares Pinyin symbols and IPA in describing Mandarin initials (consonant sounds) and finals (vowel sounds). At the end, it is found out that both pinyin and IPA have advantages and disadvantages.