Higher Mandarin Language For Adults Vocabulary Series In this first part of our Mandarin for Adults Vocabulary Series, we are going to introduce five common polyphones and teach you how to use them properly. What needs to be mentioned is that having a good command of the most commonly used Chinese polyphones will be of great help in learning Chinese at the intermediate level. 1) 好 This character has two different pronunciations, hao3 and hao4. Each one has its own special meaning, and both forms of this character will combine with other words