Mandarin characters don’t tell you how to pronounce a word. They are more like pictures that represent an object or an idea. Burt: Correct! Mandarin characters don't give us the sound of a word ...

Pinyin is arguably the easiest way of learning the pronunciations of characters. However, while it is mandatory for many students in Hong Kong to learn Hanyu Pinyin in Putonghua classes, Cantonese ...

Most people have probably never heard of 111-year-old linguist Zhou Youguang. But if you’re learning Chinese, you’ve seen his work. He helped develop the pinyin writing system – the ...