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Podcast Episode

318 - 9 questions about Pinyin and Chinese pronunciation

Hacking Chinese Podcast·Olle Linge·15 September 2026·25 min

About this episode

Learning to pronounce Mandarin can be tricky, and if you misunderstand the link between spoken sounds and Pinyin spelling, it gets a lot worse. Let’s discuss nine questions about learning Chinese pronunciation.#learnchinese #pinyin #pronunciation #questionsLink to the article this podcast episode is based on: 9 answers to questions about Pinyin and pronunciation: https://www.hackingchinese.com/9-answers-to-questions-about-pinyin-and-pronunciation/Chinese Language Stack Exchange: https://chinese.stackexchange.com/5 websites to help answer your questions about Chinese: https://www.hackingchinese.com/5-websites-to-help-answer-your-questions-about-chinese/101 questions and answers about how to learn Chinese: https://www.hackingchinese.com/101-questions-and-answers-about-how-to-learn-chinese/Hacking Chinese Pronunciation: Speaking with Confidence: https://www.hackingchinese.com/courses/mandarin-chinese-pronunciation-course/Pinyin chart (AllSet Learning): https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/pinyin_chartA guide to Pinyin traps and pitfalls: Learning Mandarin pronunciation: https://www.hackingchinese.com/a-guide-to-pinyin-traps-and-pitfalls/Obligatory and optional tone change rules in Mandarin: https://www.hackingchinese.com/optional-obligatory-tone-change-rules-mandarin/International Phonetic Alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_AlphabetLearning the third tone in Mandarin Chinese: https://www.hackingchinese.com/learning-the-third-tone/Focus on initials and finals, not Pinyin spelling: https://www.hackingchinese.com/focus-on-initials-and-finals-not-pinyin-spelling/Why learning Chinese pronunciation by using English words is a really bad idea: https://www.hackingchinese.com/why-learning-chinese-pronunciation-by-using-english-words-is-a-really-bad-idea/Yuen Ren Chao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuen_Ren_ChaoGwoyeu Romatzyh: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwoyeu_RomatzyhLearning to pronounce Mandarin with Pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA: Part 1: https://www.hackingchinese.com/learning-to-pronounce-mandarin-with-pinyin-zhuyin-and-ipa-part-1/More information and inspiration about learning and teaching Chinese can be found at https://www.hackingchinese.comMusic: "Traxis 1 ~ F. Benjamin" by Traxis, 2020 - Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0)