Pinyin is the official romanization/transliteration system for Chinese characters in Mainland China. Children in China even learn pinyin before they begin to learn the characters!

(Notice that's Chinese characters. Not symbols!)

To learn even the smallest bit of Chinese, you must first understand how to read pinyin! 

Those, my friends, are the tone markings! As you may or may not know already, Chinese is a tonal language. That means that the intonation of your voice is an integral part of the word. The tone markings in pinyin show you what tone each syllable is, so it can be read properly. 

To a native Chinese speaker, the same roman letters with different tone markings will sound like completely different words! 

For example: 

We'll talk about tones in an upcoming series, but don't worry, tones aren't as scary or hard as they seem at first!

While many letters are pronounced the same in English & pinyin, many aren't quite (or aren't really at all)! So, before we go any further, let's learn how to pronounce the individual pinyin consonants:

Pt. 1: Pinyin [Chinese Words, Roman Alphabet]

Pt. 2: Pinyin, Consonant Pronunciation

Pt. 3: Vowel Pronunciation

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