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—Nikolai Galkin, United Nations

Stepping Stones Lesson One

2. Audio Practice

Listen to one line of the poem, and then repeat it aloud. Follow the characters in the text as you listen--each character corresponds to one syllable. Practice until you can recite the line from memory. Then go on to the next line. Again, don't worry about the meaning for now.

	上	山,	下	楼
	shàng	shān	xià	lóu

一	二	三,	上	东	山,
yī	èr	sān,	shàng	dōng	shān,

四	五	六,	下	西	楼。
sì	wǔ	liù,	xià	xī	lóu。

七	八	九	向	南	走,
qī	bā	jiǔ,	xiàng	nán	zǒu,

十	个	人,	进	北	门。
shí	gè	rén,	jìn	běi	mén。

Study Notes

Pinyin

Pinyin is a romanization system used to teach pronunciation for the Chinese spoken language. Each Chinese character is pronounced using a single syllable. Pinyin uses the English alphabet to spell out the pronunciation of each of these syllables. Spoken Chinese is a tonal language, meaning that the Chinese speaker indicates a word not only by phonetic pronunciation, but also by voice inflection. Mandarin Chinese has four different tones. Consequently, the pinyin romanization system includes four tonal symbols, one for each different tone. Each pinyin syllable contains one tonal symbol (located above a vowel) that indicates which tone is to be used when pronouncing it. For a more detailed explanation of the pinyin system please refer to this article.

Once you have memorized each line of the poem, you are ready to go on to the next step.