Abstract:
This paper describes the neutral pronunciation of modern Mandarin Chinese, or putonghua, i.e. the 'common language', with a concise reference to the Pekingese accent, due to its importance as the fundament of Mandarin pronunciation. The author uses the official romanization system pinyin, accompanied by a careful phonetic transcription based on Luciano Canepari's extended version of the International Phonetic Alphabet, or 'canIPA', to show and acquire a good pronunciation. At the beginning, a well meditated phonemic transcription is provided, too, in accordance with precise descriptive and teaching strategies. The paper also includes numerous examples of single words, phrases, sentences and extended texts, fully transcribed in canIPA symbols, which precisely convey all necessary information on Chinese vocoids, contoids, tones and intonational peculiarities.
