Finals: vowels and the n and ng endings

A Mandarin syllable can end only in a vowel, n or ng, so 饭 fàn (meal) and 放 fàng (to put) are told apart by the last sound alone.

After the initial comes the final: everything from the first vowel to the end of the syllable. Mandarin keeps its syllables simple. There are no clusters like the str of street, and a syllable can only end in a vowel, in n, or in ng. That is one reason the language has only about 400 different syllables before tones are counted, compared with thousands in English. The pinyin scheme’s table of finals has 35 entries arranged in four columns, and its notes add a few special cases: er, the rare ê, and the i after zh, ch, sh, r, z, c and s.

Six simple vowels

The six simple finals are a, o, e, i, u and ü. a is open, as in father. i is the ee of see, and u is the oo of food with rounded lips. o on its own is like the o of more, and after b, p, m and f it slides in from a short u, so 波 bō sounds close to bwo. The two surprises are e and ü. Pinyin e is not the e of bed. It is made far back in the mouth with the lips spread, like a relaxed uh, as if you were about to say the oo of book without rounding your lips. ü has no English equivalent: say i, then round your lips as if to whistle without moving the tongue. The French u and the German ü are the same sound.

Glides and compound finals

Most other finals are built by combining these vowels. The first column of the table is the plain set: ai, ei, ao, ou, an, en, ang, eng, ong. The other three columns put a short i, u or ü in front, like the y of yes, the w of wet or a rounded y: ia, ie, iao, iou, ian, in, iang, ing, iong; ua, uo, uai, uei, uan, uen, uang, ueng; üe, üan, ün. Read them as one quick movement, not two separate vowels. In ie and üe the e is no longer the back uh but a clear e as in yes, which is why 谢 xiè sounds like shyeh.

n and ng

The nasal endings matter because they change the word. For -n, finish with the tongue tip pressed on the ridge behind the upper teeth, as at the end of the English word fan. For -ng, the tip stays down and the back of the tongue rises, as in song. 饭 fàn is a meal and 放 fàng is to put; 人 rén is a person and 冷 lěng is cold. The vowel shifts a little too: the a in -an is brighter and the a in -ang is darker and further back. If you mix them up, record yourself saying fan and fang in English, then copy the same tongue positions.

The buzzing i and er

One spelling trips up every beginner. After zh, ch, sh, r, z, c and s, the letter i does not mean ee. The scheme uses i here because it needed some vowel letter, but the sound is just the initial held on with the voice: the tongue stays where it was for the consonant. 是 shì sounds like a buzzing shr, and 四 sì like a buzzing sz. Compare 西 xī (west), which has a true ee. The final er, as in 二 èr (two), is said with the tongue curled back. Added to the end of another syllable it becomes a single r, so 花 huā plus 儿 becomes huār, a habit typical of Beijing speech.