Standard Chinese
From Roses, Tulips, & Liberty
Standard Chinese (Chinese: 華語, lit. 'Chinese speech'), commonly Chinese or Mandarin, is the modern standardised form of Chinese that was developed between the Canton War (1857) and the Great War (1939). It is largely based on the imperial Mandarin of Namging as well as Cantonese. The dialect is designated as the official language of the Chinese Republic and is used in Tauland and the Chinese diaspora.
History
Geographic distribution
Phonology
Standard Chinese consists of 17 initials and 41 finals.
Consonants
Labial | Alveolar | Palatals | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m [m] 摸 | n [n] 挪 | ng [ŋ] 我 | |||
Stop | plain | b [p] 波 | d [t] 多 | g [k] 哥 | [ʔ] 亞 | |
aspirated | p [pʰ] 婆 | t [tʰ] 拖 | k [kʰ] 卡 | |||
Affricative | plain | z [ts] 知 | ||||
aspirated | c [tsʰ] 雌 | |||||
Fricative | f [f] 科 | s [s] 思 | x [ʃ] 書 | h [h] 何 | ||
Approximant | l [l] 羅 | j [j] 也 | w [w] 華 |
Vowels
IPA | Oral | Nasal | Medial | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
- | -a | -e | -o | -i | -u | -m | -n | -ng | -ai | -au | -an | -ang | -ong | ||
[a] | a | a 呀 | ai 矮 | au 歐 | am 痷 | an 恩 | ang 鶯 | ||||||||
[ɛ~e] | e | e 誒 | ei 非 | em 舐 | eng 鏡 | ||||||||||
[i~ɪ] | i | i 衣 | ia 夏 | ie 切 | iu 妖 | im 淹 | in 煙 | ing 英 | iau 喬 | ian 僉 | iang 彊 | iong 匔 | |||
[ɔ~o] | o | o 柯 | oi 哀 | ou 奧 | on 安 | ong 康 | |||||||||
[u~ʊ] | u | u 烏 | ua 㔍 | uo 國 | ui 煨 | un 碗 | ung 甕 | uai 膗 | uan 汆 | uang 刅 | |||||
[œ] | eu | eu 靴 | eun 順 | eung 香 | |||||||||||
[y] | iu | iu 於 | iun 冤 | iuan 傳 |