Lesson 3: Nǐ hǎo

Ni Hao but with some lines on top of it

Errr didn’t we already do this lesson…? Why are there those lines above the words now?

Since we have those lines above the words we are actually doing a different lesson, despite the fact that they are the same words as what we saw in lesson 1. This is a good introduction to understanding that different lines above words will completely change the meaning of words. Don’t worry too much about that now we will get into that a little later. For now, know that with those lines, we are not doing the same lesson.

Ok first things first, rather than denoting them as ‘words’ let’s use some more formal language — these ‘words’ are actually known as pin yin.

What is pin yin?

Think of pin yin as the (phonetic) spelling of what each character sounds like.

Why is this a thing?

The language system in Mandarin is made up of characters so when you read sentences it actually looks like

So remember in school when you were taught to sound out a word? Duck was..

D (de)

U (uh)

CK (keh)

= DUCK

Yeah…good luck sounding out the characters above..

This is why there is Pin Yin. Pin Yin is the phonetic pronunciation of each character. Essentially what that means is, it spells out how it sounds. It produces a ‘word’ (kind of) that non-Mandarin readers with an English base can use to ‘sound’ out the word.

For example the character 水 means water.

Ok now say it in Mandarin.

With no knowledge you can’t sound it out.

With some Pin Yin you’ll know 水 = shuǐ.

Ta Da now you can sound it out.

So, in previous lessons when there were some words written next to the Chinese Characters, these were all Pin Yin and were the ‘spelling out’ of the Chinese characters.

Key Takeaway:

1. Pin Yin is the spelling out of the characters to help sound them out.

2. Different lines above Pin Yin can change a character’s meaning.