The four hu () are a traditional way of classifying syllable finals of Mandarin dialects, including

Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standa ...

, based on different glides before the central vowel of the final. They are * ''kāikǒu'' (, "open mouth"), finals without a medial * ''qíchǐ'' (, "even teeth"), finals beginning with * ''hékǒu'' (, "closed mouth"), finals beginning with * ''cuōkǒu'' (, "round mouth"), finals beginning with The terms ''kāikǒu'' and ''hékǒu'' come from the Song dynasty

rime tables A rime table or rhyme table () is a Chinese phonological model, tabulating the syllables of the series of rime dictionaries beginning with the '' Qieyun'' (601) by their onsets, rhyme groups, tones and other properties. The method gave a significa ...

describing

Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...

. The Qing phonologist Pan Lei divided each of these categories in two based on the absence or presence of palatalization, and named the two new categories. pp 128–129. This traditional classification is reflected in the

bopomofo Bopomofo (), or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, also named Zhuyin (), is a Chinese transliteration system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe ...

notation for the finals, but less directly in the

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

Notes

References

; Citations ; Works cited * * * {{cite book , given = Yen-Hwei , surname = Lin , title = The Sounds of Chinese , location = Cambridge , publisher = Cambridge University Press , year = 2007 History of the Chinese language Traditional Chinese phonology