There are no letters in Chinese and therefore, there is no alphabet in Chinese writing.

The earlier form of characters developed from graphic representation of certain objects, for example, shape of a moon was used to write a moon.

As time went on, it became much more complex or even possible at all to represent words in graphic. The majority of symbols today do not have a direct link between shape and meaning. What stays in common is that they all represent a concept and not a sound.

Chinese characters represent concepts, ideas or objects. Although there are some relationship between structures of each symbol and its pronunciation, symbols can't be broken down into smaller components to construct a new word.

Rosie From Learn Chinese Language Online (http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com)

The goal of Learn Chinese Language Online (LCLO) is to reduce the Mandarin Learning curve, promote and introduce the most efficient way to grasp the broad foundation of Chinese language.

Subscribe Free Chinese Newsletter: http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com/learn-chinese-free-newsletter.html

The consonant that begins a syllable is initial (listen to pronunciation in mp3 format online at http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com/chinese-pinyin-initials.html) , they can be:

b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, r, y, w

The rest parts after initial are finals. Final ( listen to pronunciation in mp3 format online at http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com/chinese-pinyin-finals.html ) can be a single vowel, a combination of vowels, or combination of vowels and nasals 'n' or 'ng':

There are 6 simple finals which are single vowels, they are : a, o, e, i, u, ü .

The others are compound finals, they are:

ai, ao, ou, ei, ia, ie, iao, iou, ua, uo, uai, uei, üe,

an, ang, ong, en, eng, in, ing, ian, iang, iong, uen, ueng, uan, uang, ün, üan

The combination of 21 initials and 33 finals in Mandarin romanization (there are five more finals, but they share same symbols as other finals) form about 420 different sounds.

A word consists of initial + final + tone. In some cases, initial can be omitted.

Although most of sounds are generally close to how they are used and pronounced in English, some don't follow English letters exactly and are pronounced differently.

Pay extra attention to differences and listen closely to each Chinese sound, it takes practices to pronounce correctly.

Rosie From Learn Chinese Language Online (http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com)

The goal of Learn Chinese Language Online (LCLO) is to reduce the Mandarin Learning curve, promote and introduce the most efficient way to grasp the broad foundation of Chinese language.