Whole Syllables

Forty four stone lions! 四十四只石狮子!

Whole Syllables are some fixed combinations of consonants and vowels that have a pre-designated pronunciation. For these special syllables, it’s not possible to derive its pronunciation from the comprising consonants and vowels - we will have to memorise their somewhat unnatural pronunciations.

Fortunately, there are not many of them - only 16. :-)

Syllables	Pronunciation
zhi
chi
shi
ri
zi
ci
si
yi
wu
yu
ye
yue
yin
yun
yuan
ying