More of the Mandarin Phonetics.

You have seen the previous post and you have possibly been thinking about this idea of phonetics when it comes to Mandarin and you might have had a wee practice at saying you would like a coffee. So here is something that must be familiar to you;

“feng shwey”

Yep, sound familiar?…  If you are not sure, then think ‘how you may use energy forces to harmonise yourself or other individuals with their surrounding environment’… all that sorting out the furniture in your room so it feels good; yeah, that feng shwey.

It is is written in Pinyin as “fēng shuĭ” and it means wind and water. feng means wind and shwey means water and how you say it phonetically will sounds familiar.

So shwey means water, in Pinyin it is written as shuĭ. Now if you take the word for water and match it to the previous blog post on asking for coffee and you want to ask for water and not coffee then you can say this phonetically.

 “I would like a water” which will sound like this: “woa siang yao shwey”

To make it sound even better because you want to ask for a glass of water then you would add in the word for a glass which sounds like this;

“ee bay”

Sounds like your favourite online selling site, eBay and in Pinyin it is written like this;

“yī bēi”

Pulling that sentence together then you say this phonetically;

“woa siang yao ee bay shwey” which is  “I would like a Glass of water water”

Get it?

By the way, the sentence above in Pinyin is written like this;

“wŏ xiăng yào yī bēi shuĭ”

There you have it. A little more Mandarin learned through phonetics so take time to read back through and practice what was shared above and on the previous blog.

More to come. Keep learning.

Iain