#aka unfortunately modaozushi does not rhyme with sushi

[fresh-bag-of-ham]

a ramble about pinyin/english speakers trying to pronounce chinese words that no one asked for! hopefully this helps one person?

so Pinyin is the official phonetic romanization system for Mandarin Chinese in Mainland China. It was designed by Chinese linguists to improve literacy rates in China, so it's designed first and foremost for native speakers and not to be immediately legible to English speakers/other Roman alphabet users, unfortunately for us! (The next most popular romanization system, Wade-Giles, was designed by two Brits, but it's... not better lol. It gets used more in Taiwan, especially for names. Mao Zedong is PY, Mao Tse-tung is WG.)

The first thing you do when you're taking a beginner Chinese course is you drill consonants (technically called "initials") in groups according to how they're formed and the sets of vowels/endings (technically called "finals") that they pair with.

The most immediately annoying thing is the final "i" -- it never makes the same damn vowel sound! Ok that's not quite true, but with some initials, "i" works as a filler/neutral final and different groups of initials have different neutral vowels. These groups are:

1) zhi/chi/shi/ri -- The retroflex consonants! The group that makes the least English-like "i" sound. Pull your tongue back in your mouth and say "jury" without the y, "church" without the last ch, "shirt" without the t, and... "r" is like an English r that's approaching the french-j [ʒ] sound that you wish the pinyin "zh" represented instead. We would drill "zhi chi shi ri" over and over in class bc you say them all with the exact same mouth shape!

Zhi as in zhiji (soulmate), shi as in shijie (Senior Sister) and jing shi (The Silent Room). Chī means "to eat", also Chifeng-zun is Scarlet Peak Master. Rì means day, or sun! "Sunshot Campaign" is "Shè Rì Zhī Zhēng", all retroflex initials! Cool!

2) zi/si/ci -- The English short "i" sound. You've heard it a million times: gongzihhhhhh!!!  Gōngzǐ aka young lord, same zi as in tùzi (rabbit), and si as in everyone's fave Lan Sizhui (pronounced like sih-jway) and everyone's least fave Jiang Cheng telling Wei Wuxian to go die: "nǐ qù sǐ ba!" Don't think there's a ci I can easily point out, but fun fact the pinyin "c" is pronounced kind of like a hard "ts" sound! Tsangse Sanren not Kangse Sanren!

3) Everything else with "i" -- the long "ee" sound you've been dreaming of! This is “i” as an actual final and not plonked in as a filler. Wangji, Yanli, Xichen, Qishan, Yiling, WuJi, ni (you), didi (younger brother), bu bi (when Lan Zhan is being self-denying and says "no need"), di yi (first), qi (energy), and on and on and on. You’ve probably been pronouncing all these right all along, congrats!

The only consolation is that these combos will always make the same sound. When you hear a “ch”+ee” sound, that’s always qi and never chi.