A Mandarin syllable has up to three parts: an initial, a medial and a final. You have done the initials. Today covers the middles and the simplest endings.
This is where zhuyin’s structure starts to pay off. A syllable is written as a column of two or three symbols, each one a piece of the sound, so the shape of the syllable is visible in a way that a run of Latin letters never makes obvious.
Today’s symbols
Tap each one to hear it. Every recording is by a native speaker from Taiwan.
Medials
Simple finals
What to notice
Medials: ㄧㄨㄩ
Roughly "ee", "oo", and one that English does not have. ㄩ is the same vowel as the u in French "tu" or German "ü": say ㄧ and then, without moving your tongue at all, round your lips.
Simple finals: ㄚㄛㄜㄝ
Open to closed. ㄜ is the odd one out and the only symbol in the entire system not taken from a Chinese character; it was created in 1920 by adding a stroke to ㄛ, seven years after everything else.
ㄧ changes direction
It is the one symbol that rotates. Written horizontally in vertical text, like the character 一 it comes from, and turned upright in horizontal text so it does not disappear into the baseline.
Practice today’s symbols
You can now read a large share of Mandarin syllables. Character Master in the app is where reading them stops being deliberate and starts being fast.