Adventures with Kake

To learn Chinese pronouciation correctly you will need to learn how to pronounce each word either by Hanyu Pinyin (new style using English alphabets) or the traditional zhuyin fuhao (the old method using Chinese symbols). Each word like English is made up of a consonant and a vowel and also controlled by the level of tone identified by the little tone mark 0 - 4, from flat tone - high - neutral. Thus the same pinyin with different marks can read differently and relate to different Chinese characters.

This is a good example to learn the different pinyin and fuhou
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mandarin_pts.htm click on the play bar to learn the sound.

I don't normally use the tone mark much when translating Chinese simply because unless you know how to differentiate the marking or tone there is no point using them. I also deviate using correct hanyu pinyi like the word 菜 (vegetable) should be 'cài' but if you try to pronounce it by plain English it becomes 'kai' and not 'chai'

Google has good translation tool to read the whole sentence and with added hanyu pinyin

http://translate.google.com/#


Chinese is like English which there is this proper Queen English there is also standard spoken Mandarin recognised and spoken the same way anywhere in the world. Mandarin can be spoken differently influenced by local dialets even in Beijing there is distinct Mandarin slang compared to that spoken in Shanghai or other places.

Other than Mandarin there are hundreds of different spoken Chinese (dialets) totally different to Mandarin like Cantonese, Fujian, Hakka, Chouzhou etc.....

Sorry a bit long to explain.

By the way re your pinyin on your last post for 蚵 (háo) is not correct, the correct pinyin is hé (or 'hur' spoken in plain English), it is more commonly used in Taiwan referring to oyster, but in their Taiwanese dialet or Fujian (Hokkien) it is read as 'oh'