Free tool拼音表
Pinyin chart with audio
Every syllable of Mandarin Chinese, one row each, with its four tones side by side. Tap a syllable to hear it in all four tones, from mā to mà. Print it for your desk or your class.
How to read the pinyin chart
Every Mandarin syllable has two parts. The initial is the consonant at the start, and the final is the rest: zh and ong give zhong, as in 中国 Zhōngguó (China).
The chart lists every syllable once, grouped by its initial. Each row is one syllable, and the four columns are its four tones. Tap the syllable to hear the four tones in order, or tap one tone to hear it alone. To find a syllable fast, type it in the search box; you can write v for ü.
The first group holds the syllables with no initial. Those that start with i, u or ü are spelled with y or w (yi, wu, yu), but these letters are only spelling rules. They are not initials.
The printed chart is the classic grid. The 21 initials are the columns, and the finals are the rows. Where a column meets a row, you find the syllable they make. A blank cell is a combination that Mandarin does not use.
Initials and finals
Most initials sound close to English: b p m f d t n l g k h s. The main surprise is the difference between b and p. In Mandarin it is not about voice, as in English, but about air. p t k (and q c ch) come with a strong puff of breath. b d g (and j z zh) have none. Hold your hand in front of your mouth: you should feel the difference.
The finals are vowels, sometimes with -n or -ng at the end. They come in four families: finals with a o e, finals that start with i, finals that start with u, and finals that start with ü. Some finals are spelled short after an initial: iou becomes iu (liù), uei becomes ui (guì), and uen becomes un (lùn).
The hard sounds
zh ch sh r: curl the tip of your tongue up and back, behind the ridge above your top teeth. zh is close to the j in “jar”, ch to the ch in “chart” with a puff of air, and sh to the sh in “shirt”. r sits between the English r and the s in “pleasure”.
j q x: keep the tongue flat, with its tip behind your lower teeth, and spread your lips as if you smile. q is close to the ch in “cheese”, and x is between s and sh. These three only come before i or ü, so the u in ju, qu and xu is really ü.
z c s: the tongue stays behind the top teeth. z is the ds in “kids”, c is the ts in “cats” with a puff of air, and s is a plain s. Most learners read c as k at first; it never is.
ü: say “ee” and round your lips as for “oo”, without moving your tongue. It keeps its two dots only after n and l (nǚ, lǜ), where plain u would make another syllable. After j q x and y the dots are left out.
The -i sound: after zh ch sh r and z c s, the letter i is not “ee”. It is a buzzy vowel that keeps the tongue where the consonant put it. shì (是) sounds a little like “shrr”, and sì (四) like a short “szz”. Type i in the search box, then compare zhi, shi and si with xi and ji.
Tone marks and where they go
Mandarin has four tones, and pinyin shows them with a mark over a vowel: ā high and level, á rising, ǎ low and dipping, à falling. When you type pinyin without marks, a number after the syllable does the same job: ma1 is mā.
The mark goes on a or e when the syllable has one (hǎo, xiè). In ou it goes on the o (zǒu). Otherwise it goes on the last vowel: liù, guì, duō.
The neutral tone
Some syllables in words lose their tone and are said short and light. Pinyin writes them with no mark: 妈妈 māma (mom), 朋友 péngyou (friend), and small words such as 吗 ma and 的 de. The neutral tone takes its pitch from the syllable before it.
To train your ear for all of this, try the tone trainer. If you are starting from zero, the beginner roadmap takes you from the sounds to your first words and stories.
Questions about pinyin
- What is pinyin?
- Pinyin is the official system for writing Mandarin Chinese sounds with the Latin alphabet. China adopted it in 1958. Schools use it to teach characters, dictionaries use it to list them, and most people in China type Chinese on their phones by typing pinyin.
- How many syllables are there in Mandarin?
- About 400 without tones. This chart has 409: every combination of an initial and a final that Mandarin uses, including a few rare ones such as fo, dia and kei. English has thousands of possible syllables, so the set is small and you can learn all of it.
- How many syllables are there with tones?
- If every syllable took all four tones, there would be about 1,600. Real words use fewer, because some syllables never occur in some tones. The chart plays all four tones of every syllable so you can hear the pattern, even where a tone is rare.
- Why is there no neutral tone in the chart?
- The neutral tone only occurs inside words and phrases, on a light second syllable such as the ma in māma (mom). A syllable said alone always has one of the four tones, so the chart records those.
- Can I print the pinyin chart?
- Yes. Use the Print button above the chart. It prints the classic grid of initials and finals on one portrait page. Teachers are welcome to copy it for a class.
- Why does a syllable sound different inside a word?
- Some tones change next to other tones. Two third tones in a row become a second tone and a third tone, and 一 (yī) and 不 (bù) change with the tone after them. The tone trainer on this site explains these changes and lets you practice them.
