Pinyin is the Chinese language phonetic system. It is used to mark Mandarin Chinese pronunciation by the Latin alphabet.

  In Chinese, every character corresponds to one single syllable. Therefore, one-syllable marks the pronunciation of one character.

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  A typical Pinyin syllable consists of three parts: initial, final and tone.

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  The initial is always put at the beginning of a syllable and you can only use one initial in a syllable.

  Each initial is made up of one or two letters. There are 23 Chinese.

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  The final is put after the initial, you can only use one final in a syllable. A final can be a syllable by itself without the initial or the tone.

  Each final is made up of one to four letters. There are 35 finals in Chinese.

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The tone notification mark is always added above the final. You can only use one tone in a syllable. Sometimes no tone is used.

There are 4 tones in Chinese.