NetChai · Introductory · Foreword

Foreword― About Pronunciation ―

PROLOGUE NETCHAI ORIGINAL TEXT
Introductory · Foreword
This course material is for the Introductory Course of NetChai, the online Chinese language school.

You are now beginning your study of Chinese. In this Introductory Course, you will learn Pronunciation — the most fundamental and most important part of the Chinese language.

Every learner of Chinese starts with pronunciation, and many people find themselves wrestling with it for a long time.

In this Introductory Course you will study pronunciation in depth, but at the very beginning you do not need to memorize every detail. Let's start by getting a broad overview of what Chinese pronunciation is like.

That said, please make sure to understand "The Four Tones (四声, sìshēng)" — covered in Lesson 1 — as early as possible, so that you can both hear and distinguish them, and produce them yourself. In Chinese, without knowing the four tones you cannot even pronounce your own name correctly.

As mentioned above, you do not need to master pronunciation completely within this Introductory Course. Whenever something becomes unclear as you progress through the material, come back and review the relevant section.

The study of pronunciation — the very first thing you tackle when learning Chinese — may feel tedious at times, but looking back later you will realize just how important it truly was.

Let's get started and dive into Chinese!