Chinese Phonetics

==About==
Within China itself, there are many different languages that are members of the Sinitic Language Family, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Yin, and so on. Despite these acting as different languages, they are known in English as "dialects." There are many regional dialects of the official "dialects" of Chinese.A Grammar of Mandarin by Jeroen Wiedenhof
The official language of the People's Republic of China is Mandarin, due to Mandarin being a wide-spread dialect and the dialect that officials would use in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Mandarin is not with the other dialects, as the other dialects are actually different languages. The language itself originated from Northern China and spread over time. Mandarin is spoken by 70% of all Chinese within China. When taken as a whole there are an estimated 1 billion Mandarin speakers, the most of any language in the world. When a VOCALOID is said to have a "Chinese Voicebank", it refers to having a voicebank in Mandarin. Common forms of this language is also considered the of China. 
Mandarin Chinese has 21 consonants and 16 vowels. They can be combined together to create over 400 mono-syllabic sounds.link As a tonal language, Mandarin Chinese also have 4 main tones and a neutral tone that changes the meaning of a word depending on the tone. However, tones are usually ignored when composing lyrics.
Due to how widespread the language is, it has influenced a number of languages around the area of China, having an influence on both Korean Phonetics and Japanese Phonetics.
==Notes on Accents==
Mandarin is noted for having hundreds of variations on the language within different localized areas. This is contributed to the large number of speakers and the widespread nature of the Chinese language and circumstances behind the area. 
===Mainland Accents===
The phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of China, is modeled on Beijing Mandarin. This is the version of Mandarin that VOCALOID also uses. 
* Luo Tianyi
* YANHE
* Yuezheng Ling
* Xingchen
* Yuezheng Longya
* Zhiyu Moke
* Mo Qingxian
* Zhang Chuchu
* Yuecheng
===Taiwanese Accent===
Standard Chinese is also spoken in Taiwan. The phonology is slightly different; many Taiwanese usually pronounce retroflex (zh, ch, sh) consonants as alveolar consonants (z, c, s) due to influence from . When they do pronounce retroflex syllables (e.g. in formal situations), they pronounce them softer than in Mandarin based on the Beijing standard.
A Taiwanese speaker is not always understood by speakers from Mainland China due to differences in the accents, including different words being mistaken for each other.
* Xin Hua
===Japanese Accent===
Japanese-Mandarin accented VOCALOIDs are produced by those who came from Japan. Their voice providers have the Japanese language as their native language, but were used to produce Mandarin-Chinese voicebanks. Therefore the Japanese-Mandarin accent is a non-native Mandarin accent, showing significant and notorious differences in comparison to the native Mandarin accents.
*Hatsune Miku
==Phonetic chart==
Symbol	Classification	IPA Symbol / Name	 	Notes
a 	Final 	 	ba 	
o 	Final 	/ u̯ɔ 	po 	
7 	Final 	~ɯ̯ɤ 	ke 	
i 	Final 	 	ji, yi 	
u 	Final 	 	fu, wu 	
y 	Final 	 	ju, qu, xu, nü, lü, yu 	
@` 	Final 	ɑɻ~ 	er 	
i\ 	Final 	 	zi, ci, si 	
i` 	Final 	ɨ˞ 	zhi, chi, shi, ri 	
aI 	Final 	aɪ̯ 	sai 	
ei 	Final 	eɪ̯ 	fei 	
AU 	Final 	ɑʊ̯ 	hao 	
@U 	Final 	ɤʊ̯ 	hou 	
ia 	Final 	i̯ä 	xia, ya 	
iE_r 	Final 	i̯e̞ 	jie, ye 	
ua 	Final 	u̯ä 	kua, wa 	
uo 	Final 	u̯ɔ 	huo , wo 	
yE_r 	Final 	y̯e̞ 	jue, que, xue, nüe, lüe, yue	
iAU 	Final 	i̯ɑʊ̯ 	xiao, yao 	
i@U 	Final 	i̯ɤʊ̯~i̯oʊ̯ 	jiu, you 	
uaI 	Final 	u̯aɪ̯ 	kuai, wai 	
uei 	Final 	u̯eɪ̯ 	gui, wei 	
a_n 	Final 	an 	fan 	
@_n 	Final 	ən 	fen 	
i_n 	Final 	in 	xin, yin 	
iE_n 	Final 	i̯ɛn 	qian, yan 	
ua_n 	Final 	u̯an 	duan, wan 	
u@_n 	Final 	u̯ən 	dun, wen 	
y_n 	Final 	yn 	xun, yun 	
y{_n 	Final 	y̯ɛn~yan 	xuan, yuan 	
AN 	Final 	ɑŋ 	pang 	
@N 	Final 	əŋ~ɤŋ 	beng 	
iN 	Final 	iŋ 	xing, ying 	
iAN 	Final 	i̯ɑŋ 	xiang, yang 	
uAN 	Final 	u̯ɑŋ 	chuang, wang 	
u@N 	Final 	u̯əŋ~uɤŋ 	weng 	
UN 	Final 	ʊŋ 	dong 	
iUN 	Final 	i̯ʊŋ 	xiong, yong 	
p 	Initial 	 	bo 	
p_h 	Initial 	pʰ 	po 	
m 	Initial 	 	mo 	
f 	Initial 	 	fo 	
t 	Initial 	 	de 	
t_h 	Initial 	tʰ 	te 	
n 	Initial 	 	ne 	
l 	Initial 	 	le 	
k 	Initial 	 	ge 	
k_h 	Initial 	kʰ 	ke 	
x 	Initial 	~ 	he 	
ts\ 	Initial 	 	ji 	
ts\_h 	Initial 	t͡ɕʰ 	qi 	
s\ 	Initial 	 	xi 	
ts` 	Initial 	 	zhi 	
ts`_h 	Initial 	ʈ͡ʂʰ 	chi 	
s` 	Initial 	 	shi 	
z` 	Initial 	~ 	ri 	
ts 	Initial 	 	zi 	
ts_h 	Initial 	t͡sʰ 	ci 	
s 	Initial 	 	si 	
==Continued development==
As of 2018, Chinese is considered the second most popular language and has the third largest voicebank selection on offer. 
However, there is still much unknown about these voicebanks at this time.
Chinese VOCALOIDs were held back in VOCALOID3 at a point by the events of the VOCALOID CHINA and Ren Li incident, which caused a overall delay in the release of the Shanghai HENIAN Information Technology Co. Ltd. vocals that impacted the VOCALOID CHINA cast. 
With the events resolved and developments resumed, for VOCALOID4 the number of released vocals was seven in total (Xingchen, Yuezheng Longya, Xin Hua, Hatsune Miku, Luo Tianyi, Zhiyu Moke, and Mo Qingxian, some of which receiving more then 1 voicebank) which was a vast increase over VOCALOID3. Even with Hatsune Miku V4 Chinese removed from the equation, the number of native Chinese voicebanks still was greater than native English voicebanks in that era (CYBER DIVA, RUBY, DEX, DAINA, and CYBER SONGMAN). While the number of total English voicebanks, including non-natives, was greater than the total of Chinese voicebanks and was by far nowhere near the number of Japanese releases, this was still a significant increase from VOCALOID3. However, later voicebanks were not necessarily equal in popularity in VOCALOID4 to the earlier releases. 
Beijing Photek S&T Development Co., Ltd., the creator of Xingchen, have begun to develop Chinese voicebanks on another synthesizer, Synthesizer V, and it is unknown if this is a permanent departure from VOCALOID.
==References==
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