Do I have to learn the pinyin ?

[andreavda]

I'm a beginner student at mandarin and I get, for every chinese character, the pinyin equivalent, which is a good thing since the pinyin tells you the correct accent and the correct pronunciation, but other than that, do I have to learn how a chinese character is written in pinyin ? I mean the letters with the exact position of the accents.

I'm asking you because I'm a self-taught, well I had a teacher some time ago but not anymore, I just wanted to figure out if I can learn mandarin on my own and I haven't anyone to ask to.

[PengHaoShi]

No, the only you might need are the letters, e.g. when writing on a PC.

I have done most of my Chinese learning also without teacher, I think the biggest problem is pronunciation, if you have nobody who would correct you. But you might find a language partner, e.g. on italki.com or QQ.

[andreavda]

The reason why I asked this question is because HSK ditches pinyin after the first level, and considering that chinese characters are a lot, there is just nomore room for the pinyin. I'm not so sure, but my previous chinese teacher used to make us learn the pinyin, every single word, with the correct position of the accent.

Anyway about the pronunciation, you're kind of right, but I figured maybe I could purchase a software with audio pronunciation ?

Last year I purchased oxford advanced learner's dictionary, the most famous of all the english dictionaries, and it came with a CD with a software, it's basically an interactive dictionary, with all the meanings, games, formal letters, exercices, and the pronunciation in british english and american english, I found this resource to be very useful, even more than the dictionary since all the words included in the dictionary are in the CD as well.

Is there something like that in chinese ?

[imron]

As a learner of Chinese, you don't *have* to learn pinyin, but you will be putting yourself at a disadvantage if you don't. As a self-learner, it's something I would consider almost essential because once you have a good grasp of pinyin you can use it to accurately produce all the sounds of Chinese just from the pinyin (e.g. after looking up words in a dictionary or whatever).

That being said, you don't need to be able to memorise it as such for every character, rather, you should aim at being able to remember the pronunciation (with correct tones) and then work backwards from that to be able to produce the pinyin if needed.

[andreavda]

well to be more precise my question is: "do I have to memorise pinyin ?" I guess you answered, thanks.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Is there something like that in chinese ?

I have something like that, a Children's dictionary much like the OALD from Taiwan (I will take photos and write a review because it is so amazing).

But in order to use that, you'd need to learn the Taiwanese spelling system Bopomofo which is way more effort than Pinyin.

Just the other day I spoke to a young woman from South China, whose native was Hakka or Min Nan (I forgot), and she told me, when they learn Mandarin in school (in China!), they use hanyu pinyin to note the pronounciation! I was blown away. Chinese people in China use Hanyu Pinyin to learn Chinese?

Honestly I don't see a way around Hanyu Pinyin*, but I agree to what Imron said: very soon, you hear a word and just "know" it must be spelled "j" + "u". The sound inventory of Chinese is quite simple, and also the pinyin writing system, it's not like, say, French, with 2 meter long words

* unless you are so lucky that you can hear a word once and just remember the sound right away

[Johnny20270]

I wouldn't know how you could get by without pinyin . i find it useful for words like chuan and chuang, pin and ping

The pinyin is easy I find. I never spent any time at all learning the pinyin, if you know the pronunciation the pinyin becomes second nature. For example with the word 矿泉水 kuàngquánshuǐ for mineral water (comes up in pimsleur), I had it in my notes as kuànquángshuǐ. However the minute I heard it again I realised I had spelt it wrong

As regards a pronunciation: i do this with my Chinese friend. I pick random pinyin from the table and she has to guess the spelling and tone. Tones are never an issue but the pronunciation errors becomes very obvious. She still fails to recognise when I say chi and zhi so I'm obviously saying it wrong

[Johnny20270]

it's not like, say, French, with 2 meter long words

or german haha

Try Irish! 5 vowels and 1 constants in a word,

[imron]

Try Irish! 5 vowels and 1 constants in a word

Or Welsh, except then you'd have 5 consonants, and 1 vowel (if you were lucky)

[muyongshi]

Throw in my 2 fen on this- you should learn it and learn it well! The more advanced you get the more I find myself reviewing the pinyin to perfect my pronunciation and also more and more people point out how awful my tones are. Maybe for some they are able to separate tones and pinyin but not for me.

[civic94]

I'm a beginner student at mandarin and I get, for every chinese character, the pinyin equivalent, which is a good thing since the pinyin tells you the correct accent and the correct pronunciation, but other than that, do I have to learn how a chinese character is written in pinyin ? I mean the letters with the exact position of the accents.

I'm asking you because I'm a self-taught, well I had a teacher some time ago but not anymore, I just wanted to figure out if I can learn mandarin on my own and I haven't anyone to ask to

you dont need to if you dont want to, but it does help. it does take more time to learn with pinyin, but at least your learning the language the correct way.

[liuzhou]

Why not? It takes no time and helps in the beginning.

And all Chinese kids learn it. Although they soon forget it as they move on.

[renzhe]

Just the other day I spoke to a young woman from South China, whose native was Hakka or Min Nan (I forgot), and she told me, when they learn Mandarin in school (in China!), they use hanyu pinyin to note the pronounciation! I was blown away. Chinese people in China use Hanyu Pinyin to learn Chinese?

Haha, that is actually what Hanyu Pinyin was invented for!

I agree with everyone else. Simply learn how Pinyin is correctly pronounced (most of it is straight-forward, but there are some tricky bits like q, j, z, zh and x) because it is really useful. Don't memorize the pinyin by heart, rather learn the rules of pinyin and then you'll be able to pronounce anything written in pinyin and likewise note any pronunciation yourself.

I would argue that Pinyin is something you need. You need it to look up words in a dictionary and to read/write Chinese names in other languages, so it comes in pretty handy. Luckily, Pinyin is easy.

[roddy]

Plus for typing. Basically that guarantees that you're going to learn it, so you might as well learn it early and properly.

[Demonic_Duck]

Another consideration to think about: if you learn incorrect pronunciation but correct pinyin to start with, it's easier to modify that behaviour later on ("ah, I was pronouncing 'x' sounds too similarly to 'sh' sounds all along, now I know the difference so I can change the way I pronounce all words in pinyin written with an 'x'"). However, if you only learn the incorrect pronunciation, you'll have a hard time knowing which words you need to change your pronunciation of.

[Kelby]

Pinyin's ridiculously easy for an English speaker to learn, and as you go along you get a feel for how each word you hear should be spelled. I wouldn't stress too much about knowing exactly how each character is rendered with Pinyin unless you need it for a test. It's pretty darn useful for typing and texting, but I personally still fumble around to find the right letters when I text sometimes and I do it on the daily.

I don't think you're having any trouble with using Pinyin, but if that's the case check out this and this.

[Johnny20270]

Pinyin's ridiculously easy for an English speaker to learn

wish the pronunciation was as easy but just takes practice. Rereading the various pronunciation guides for initial and finals every now and then helps me

[Sobria-Ebritas]

well to be more precise my question is: "do I have to memorise pinyin ?" I guess you answered, thanks.

My recommendation would be to learn the pinyin as a transcription system for the reasons other people have mentioned. But I would advise you to learn the pronounciation of words made up of more than one character. For example, if you learn the pronounciation of 就是说 jiùshìshuō ("that is to say; in other words; namely"), you learn the pronounciation of three characters.

Good luck!