Six Simple Finals

There are six simple finals in Pinyin: a o e i u ü.

Finals are behind the initials. They should be pronounced with more power than initials.

Here are tips of how to pronounce the six simple finals.

• ɑ. Open your mouth wide and relax your tongue naturally.
• o. Round your lips, and open it a little bit, and move your tongue back slightly.
• e. It’s similar to the phonetic sound /3:/ in the British English word “bird”, but don’t widen your mouth too much.
• i. Open your mouth wider and keep your teeth aligned.
• u. When you pronounce u, protrude your lips forward, and tighten them into a circle.
• ü. When you pronounce ü, there are two main steps. Step one, pronounce i. Step two, keep your tongue in the same position while forming your lips into a circle like u.

After learning tones and initials, you can combine them with the final a to form a syllable. For example, bà (father). We pronounce the initial b lightly, and quickly move on to the final a. Then the final should be pronounced fully and loudly. From the video, we however know that not all initials and finals can be combined together. Here, e cannot be put with b p m f. But the final itself can be one syllable.

For example, “è” means “hungry”, “Wǒ è le.”means “I’m hungry”. “Nǐ è ma?” means “Are you hungry?” Click to listen