Mandarin characters don't give us the sound of a word, so the Chinese invented pinyin to help their learners. They took the letters of the Roman alphabet, the same we use for English, and used it ...

Cantonese Pinyin has 56 finals (the equivalent of consonants in English), while Putonghua has 37. Poon says the large amount of finals is one of the main reasons why many Chinese learners (both ...