The phonological system of the modern standard language in Chinese,
Chinese don't have letters. Unlike the alphabetic writing languages that Westerners are familiar with, Chinese is a pictorial language that uses different components to form a character. Writing a Chinese character is a lot like building blocks – with the blocks being the character components.
All letters of the English alphabet except for “v” are used in the pinyin system. However, the correspondence between letter and sound does not exactly follow that of any other language.
Similar to vowels, some consonant sounds common in English such as 'r', 'v', 'l' just don't exist in Chinese. I often hear Chinese speakers try to replace these sounds with the ones they know. This sometimes makes the original words hardly recognisable.
Pinyin, as someone mentioned before, doesn't have a V. V is cleverly used in keyboard typing patterns to represent the pinyin ü. Speakers of some dialects do make some approximant sounds that resemble the english “v” , though, but it's not standard.
This character means the second and it looks like 2! Though not used as often, it could be used in a bullet point, similar to A, B, C . . . and 乙 (yǐ) would be the “B,” the second. You also see this in reference to school grading.
In essence, there is no Chinese alphabet. Unlike languages like English, Spanish, and even Korean, Chinese does not have a phonetic or syllabic writing system. Instead, the Chinese writing system is logographic, meaning that it uses symbols (Chinese characters) to represent meanings rather than sounds.
In dictionaries, j, q, and z are found the least, but some of the words are rarely used. And if you value the opinion of cryptologists (people who study secret codes and communication), x, q, and z make the fewest appearances in the writing scene.
Mandarin Chinese have "l" and "r" at the initial place of a syllable but not the end place.
Pinyin's "ü" Vowel Sound
To make pinyin's "ü" sound, make the pinyin "yi" sound (or the English "ee" sound), and then slowly round your lips. That's all there is to it! Your tongue needs to stay tense like it is when you make the "yi" sound, but your lips must be rounded.
The letters w and y are not included in the table of initials in the official pinyin system.
The letter “r” does exist in Chinese Pinyin, the romanized form of Chinese characters. However, because Chinese is a character-based language, there really is no Chinese alphabet. So, the simple answer is no. The “r” sound as it exists in English also doesn't have a direct Chinese equivalent.
However, there is still some phonology within Mandarin that isn't represented by any letter of the Latin alphabet. Some consonants in Chinese Pinyin, such as C, Q, R, X, and Z, don't represent the same sound as they do in English. Let's walk through these 5 letters.
Chinese and Japanese are two of the most popular languages to learn, Japanese is generally seen as being harder than Chinese due to its writing system and complex grammar structures.
The "biang" character is onomatopoeic, meant to mimic the sound of dough hitting a counter. It is also more complex to write than any character in the Chinese language, with a whopping 58 strokes (though, depending on whom you ask, this number may vary slightly).
The longest Chinese word is the character Biáng. The character consists of 58 strokes in traditional form and 42 strokes in simplified Chinese. The word refers to a particular style of noodles, made thick and flat like a belt.
Why did Z get removed from the alphabet? Around 300 BC, the Roman Censor Appius Claudius Caecus removed Z from the alphabet. His justification was that Z had become archaic: the pronunciation of /z/ had become /r/ by a process called rhotacism, rendering the letter Z useless.
As you can guess, the letter Z is the least commonly used letter in the English alphabet. (In American English, this letter is “zee.”) The letter Q is the second least commonly used letter. In English words, Q is almost always followed by the letter U.
Q without U is used to represent sounds not often found in English but typical in Semitic languages. Loan words such as Qur'an and Iraq are examples of Q's guttural /k/ sound. (Want to learn more about loanwords? This article can help with that.)
For example, Traditional Chinese is written in vertical columns which are read from top to bottom; the first column being on the right side of the page and the last column being on the left. In modern times, however, left-to-right horizontal Chinese has become more popular.
Mandarin Chinese
Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the writing system is extremely difficult for English speakers (and anyone else) accustomed to the Latin alphabet.
It takes about 4-7 years (roughly 2200 to 4000 hours) to become fluent in every aspect of the language, if you spend at least an hour and a half to study every day. However, it's quite common for learners to become more fluent in some areas than others depending on how they allotted their study time.