What's a vowel? What's a vowel? Can anyone explain it to me.

A consonant is a consonant that is used in front of a rhyme to form a complete syllable along with the rhyme. Other Sino-Tibetan languages have a similar structure. It is usually filled by a consonant, the initial consonant.

The main feature of consonants is that the airflow in the mouth is hindered by various obstacles when they are pronounced, so it can be said that the process of pronouncing consonants is also the process of hindering and overcoming obstacles to the airflow. Consonants are usually low in loudness, cannot be prolonged at will, and are not used in rhymes.

There are 23 consonants***, which are b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s, y, w.

Rhyme refers to the terminology of Chinese phonetics, which refers to the part of the sound of a Chinese character that is other than the consonant and the tone of the character. It was formerly known as rhyme. Rhyme consists of three parts: rhyme head (medial), rhyme belly (main vowel), and rhyme tail; according to the rhyme structure, it can be divided into single rhyme, compound rhyme, and nasal rhyme.

Single rhymes: a, o, e, ê, i, u, v

Complex rhymes: ai, ei, ao, ou, ia, ie, ua, uo, üe, iao, iou, uai, uei

Nasal rhymes: an, ian, uan, üan, en, in, uen, ün, ang, iang, uang, eng, ing, ueng, ong, iong

Expanded:

Some syllables have no consonant at the beginning of the syllable, and only a single vowel that stands alone as a syllable, such as: 愛ai, 移yi, 五wǔ, 遇yu, but they tend to be pronounced with a slight fricative component at the beginning of the syllable. This fricative can generally be depicted as a semivowel, indicating that the syllable also has a vowel-like component.

But the fricative tends to vary from person to person and has no lexical differentiation, so the phonetics of this type of syllable is called "zero consonant".

The Hanyu Pinyin Program (HPP) provides for the spelling of zero-syllable syllables, where i, u, u and syllables beginning with i, u, u are written with a y or a w, e.g., yi, wǔ, yu, and the other rhyming consonants are written independently of each other in syllables such as the previous syllable and the previous syllable are written with a diacritic symbol to be used to separate the two syllables, e.g., chao'e.

From the point of view of modern phonology, traditional Chinese phonology has been characterized as a "zero-syllable" system, which is a "zero-voice" system. From the point of view of modern phonetics, the traditional distinction between clear and turbid is actually the difference between the vocal folds fluttering or not, where the vocal folds do not flutter when pronouncing a class of consonants for the clear, where the vocal folds fluttering a class for the turbid. As for the further division of all clear, sub-clear, all turbid, sub-turbid, it involves other methods of pronunciation.

Anciently, the distinction between full clear and sub-clear and full turbid and sub-turbid was inconsistent. The "sub" of sub-clear was in relation to the air delivery of clear consonants, which was related to the strength of the airflow in the method of articulation; while the "sub" of sub-turbid mainly referred to the non-plugged, plugged fricative, and fricative turbid consonants, and the "sub" of sub-turbid mainly referred to the non-plugged, plugged fricative, and fricative turbid consonants. The sub-turbid "sub" mainly refers to the non-plug, plug-fricative, and fricative turbid consonants, and is related to the obstruction of the articulation method. Although the categorization of ancient scholars on the pronunciation of consonants is not as precise as that of modern times, it should be said that it has its own rationality.

Tongue position refers to the location of the raised part of the tongue surface during pronunciation. When a vowel is pronounced with the tongue extended forward, the tongue position is in front, and the vowel produced at this time is called a front vowel. In Mandarin, there are two front vowels, i and ü.

When you pronounce a vowel, your tongue goes back, and your tongue position is at the back, and the vowel you make is called a back vowel. In Mandarin, there are 3 back vowels, o, e, u. When you pronounce a vowel, your tongue is in the center, not in front, and the vowel is called a central vowel. In Mandarin, there is one lingual central vowel, ɑ.

Reference:

Baidu Wiki -Rhymes

References:

Baidu Encyclopedia - Vocalization