What letter from the English alphabet is not used in the Chinese language?
My Chinese teacher gave us a small assignment to find what letter from our alphabet isn't used in Chinese.
I can't seem to find a good answer...could someone help me?
I already know that Chinese doesn't use the alphabet I use in America..what SOUND, that we associate with an a letter in the latin alphabet, is not used in Chinese?
Tags: chinese teacher, good answer, latin alphabet
November 10th, 2009 at 9:41 am
The letter v is not used in pinyin, and the sound does not exist in Mandarin.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Actually Chinese does not use the Latin alphabet, it has its own scripts. The Latin alphabet is only used in pinyin or Chinese romanisation. All of the English letters are used in pinyin.
Good luck!
November 10th, 2009 at 9:41 am
It’s "R", if I’m not mistaken.
Which I could be.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Uh, Chinese doesn’t use any letters from any alphabet, not just English. Here’s a good site for you to learn: http://www.logoi.com/notes/chinese_alphabet.html
November 10th, 2009 at 9:41 am
The writing system of Chinese is completely different from that of English. English has 26 letters, and Chinese has thousands of symbols. Neither language has any symbols/letters in common.
If you’re talking about sounds, however, Chinese has a hard time distinguishing between the English sounds of R and L. They do have their own R and L sounds, but in English, they tend to use the letter R for both sounds.
I hope that was what you’re looking for!
November 10th, 2009 at 9:41 am
There is no "V" used in official pinyin, altohugh a v is sometimes used in place of a ü. Otherwise, they really have done a good job of utilizing all the other letters in pinyin.
Unlike what a previous answerer said, there is an "r" sound in mandarin, it just sounds different from English.
For example, the word Child: 儿子 (èr zi)
There are also a lot of English sounds that don’t occur in Mandarin. Neither the voiced (as in "that") or unvoiced (as in "thatch") form of "th" exists, nor does the "s" sound in "Asia."
And many of the pinyin letters are misleading — They make different sounds in Mandarin than you would expect from reading it.
For example, a "c" indicates a "ts" sound.
a "z" indicates a "dz" sound
an "e" when not attached to another vowel sounds like you are saying "ah" with your teeth clenched.
There are more, but these are just examples.