CLC Online Chinese Lessons

Student Lessons
Chinese Tones
Mandarin Chinese has four pitched tones and a "toneless" tone. The reason for having these tones is that the Chinese language has very few possible syllables -- approximately 400 -- while English has about 12,000. For this reason, there may be more homophonic words , words with the same sound expressing different meanings, in Chinese more than in most other languages. Apparently tones help the relatively small number of syllables to multiply and thereby alleviate but not completely solve the problem. Learning Chinese in context, therefore, is very important.

Pinyin Pinyin is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard Mandarin, where pin means "spell" and yin means "sound". The most common variant of pinyin in use is called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: 汉语拼音, Traditional Chinese. By letting Roman characters refer to specific Chinese sounds, pinyin produces a compact and accurate romanization, which is convenient for native Chinese speakers and scholars.

Audio Library of Common Chinese Words The Chinese lessons outlined in the components area below are designed to re-enforce your lessons, and are not an acceptable tool for self-study. CLC recommends that students review each component when their teacher has determined that said component can be most useful. Each component is roughly 20-minutes long. Please advise CLC via email of any problems you encounter in your effort to listen to the components outlined below.

*PLEASE NOTE THAT THE COMPONENTS LISTED ABOVE WILL FUNCTION WITH WINDOWS XP MEDI