Mandarin (linguistics)

:This article is on all of the Northern Chinese dialects. For the standardized official spoken Chinese language (Putonghua/Guoyu), see Standard Mandarin.

Phonology

See standard Mandarin for a description of Standard Mandarin phonology and dialects of Mandarin for an overview of the

Related Topics:
Standard Mandarin - Phonology - Dialects of Mandarin

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phonologies of Mandarin dialects. Mandarin, like most Chinese dialects/languages, is syllable timed, as opposed to many Western languages, including English, which are stress timed

Related Topics:
Syllable timed - Stress timed

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The set of syllables in Chinese is very small, since each syllable has to be constructed after the pattern: "optional initial consonant followed by vowel followed by optional nasal". Not every syllable that is possible according to this rule is actually used, and in practice there are only a few hundred syllables. For example, Mandarin totally lacks the ending 'm' sound. People with a heavy Mandarin accent would often read 'time' as 'tie-mm', or may hardly even pronounce the 'm' sound at all (giving a sound more like 'n').

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