Tibet Xizang

How to pronounce Chinese Names

The official system of romanization used in

Some visitors may initially encounter some difficulty in pronouncing Romanized Chinese words. In fact many of the sounds correspond to the usual pronunciation of the letters in English. The exceptions are:

   Initials

     C     is like the ts in ‘its’

     Q     is like the ch in ‘cheese’

     X     has no English equivalent, and can best be described as a hissing consonant that lies somewhere between sh and s. The sound was rendered as hs under an earlier transcription system.

     Z     is like the ds in ‘fads’

     Zh    is unaspirated, and sounds like the j in ‘jug’

     A     sounds like ‘ah’

     E     is pronounced as in ‘her’

     I    is pronounced as in ‘ski’(written as yi when not preceded by an initial consonant).However, in ci, chi, ri, shi, zi and zhi, the sound represented by the I final is quite different and is similar to the ir in ‘sir’, but without much stressing of the r sound.

     O    sounds like the aw in ‘low’

     U    sounds like the oo in ‘ooze’

     Ü    is pronounced as the German ü (written an yu when not preceded by an initial consonant) The last tow finals are usually written simply as e and u 

Finals in combinationWhen two or more finals are combined, such as in hao, jiao and liu, each letter retains its sound value as indicated in the list above, but note the following:     Ai    is like the ie in ‘tie’     Ei    is like the ay in ‘bay’     Ian   is like the ien in ‘