Mandarin Chinese - Phonology

Phonology

Syllables consist maximally of an initial consonant, a glide, a vowel, a final, and tone. Not every syllable that is possible according to this rule actually exists in Mandarin, as there are rules prohibiting certain phonemes from appearing with others, and in practice there are only a few hundred distinct syllables.

Phonological features that are generally shared by the Mandarin dialects include:

• the palatalization of velars and alveolar sibilants when they occur before palatal glides;
• the disappearance of final plosives and /-m/ (although in many Jianghuai Mandarin and Jin dialects, an echo of the final plosives is preserved as a glottal stop);
• the reduction of the six tones inherited from Middle Chinese after the tone split to four tones;
• the presence of retroflex consonants (although these are absent in many dialects of Southwestern and Northeastern Mandarin);
• the historical devoicing of plosives and sibilants (also common to most non-Mandarin varieties).