E with Easy Consonants
Once again, before you get confused, it's important to know from the start that pinyin e is actually pronounced in several distinct ways, depending on what other sounds it combines with. When e is a syllable all by itself, or when e simply combines with an initial consonant, it sounds as if you started out with an [ʊ] sound (as in the English word "put"), and then ended with sort of an [ʌ] sound (as in the English slang word "duh.") This pronunciation applies to the following syllables of this section: e, de, te, ne, le.
For the -n and -ng final consonants, the pronunciation of e stays roughly the same, with just the addition of the consonant sounds at the end. That gives you the following syllables: ben, beng, pen, peng, men, meng, fen, feng, deng, teng, nen, neng, leng. (Notice which possible syllables are not included. Those sounds do not exist in Mandarin, or, in the case of den, is quite rare.)
The other sound that Mandarin e makes can be heard in ei. Mandarin's ei sounds like the "ei" in the English word "vein." This is a common vowel sound you will hear in the following syllables: bei, pei, mei, fei, dei, nei, lei.
Finally, the Mandarin e can make another separate sound in the syllable er. The syllable er sounds more or less like the English word "are", although the r sound is that of Mandarin.
Linguist's Note:
The following are the IPA symbols for this section's pinyin vowel sounds:
| e | [ɣ] | |
| ei | [ei] | |
| en | [ən] | |
| eng | [əŋ] | |
| er | [ɚ] or [er] |
Listen to the sounds of this section and try repeating them by clicking on the syllables below:
| e | ei | en | eng | er | |
| e |
en |
eng |
er |
||
| b | bei |
ben |
beng |
||
| p | pei |
pen |
peng |
||
| m | mei |
men |
meng |
||
| f | fei |
fen |
feng |
||
| d | de |
dei |
deng |
||
| t | te |
teng |
|||
| n | ne |
nei |
nen |
neng |
|
| l | le |
lei |
leng |
