User:Remsense/Standard Chinese phonology

Initials
The conventional lexicographic order derived from bopomofo is:

In each cell below, the pinyin letters assigned to each initial are accompanied by their phonetic realizations in brackets, notated according to the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The sounds shown in parentheses are sometimes not analyzed as separate phonemes; for more on these, see below. Excluding these, and excluding the glides, , and , there are 19 consonant phonemes in the inventory.

Between pairs of stops or affricates having the same place of articulation and manner of articulation, the primary distinction is not voiced vs. voiceless (as in French or Russian), but unaspirated versus aspirated (as in Scottish Gaelic or Icelandic). The unaspirated stops and affricates may however become voiced in weak syllables. Such pairs are represented in the pinyin system mostly using letters which in Romance languages generally denote voiceless/voiced pairs (for example and ), or in Germanic languages often denotes fortis and lenis pairs—for example, initial aspirated voiceless/unaspirated voiced pairs like  and ). However, aspiration pairs like  and  are represented with p and b respectively in pinyin. The largest inventory of phonemes generally analyzed are given in the following table:

All of the consonants may occur as the initial sound of a syllable, with the exception of (unless the zero initial is assigned to this phoneme; see below). Excepting the rhotic coda, the only consonants that can appear in syllable coda (final) position are and  (although  may occur as an allophone of  before labial consonants in fast speech). Final, may be pronounced without complete oral closure, resulting in a syllable that in fact ends with a long nasalized vowel. See also, below.