a, a1, a2, a3, a4 (exclamation word/auxiliary word): a. ①a, zhen1 mei3! ②zu3 guo2 a, mu3 qin1!
a1 (used in personal names): a1. ①A1 Fan2 Ti2. ②A1 Shi1 Ma3. ③A1 Qing4 Sao3.
ai1 (1.dust; 2.sigh): ai1. ① qem2 ai1. ②ai1 shing1 tuan4 qi4.
ai1 (exclamation word): ei [ei]. ①ei yo, wo3 wang4 le guan1 men2. Listen.
A friend of mine is teaching her grandson Mandarin. The way she is doing it is to write out the Xī yóu jì (Journey to the West) in a simple báihuà paraphrase using Pinyin only (with glosses in English for new vocabulary). My friend is a first-generation immigrant to America, and her daughter married a German who was studying in the United States, so that makes the grandson third-generation Chinese-American/German.
The Chinese language (also called Hanyu汉语, zhongwen 中文, huawen华语) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the world speaks some form of Chinese as its native language, making it the most spoken language in the world.