Pinyin
Pinyin is how Mandarin pronunciation is written with the Latin alphabet — the 26 letters, organised into initials, finals and tones. If you are starting from zero, learn the alphabet first; if you want to look a sound up, the chart has all of them.
Start here: the alphabet
26 letters A–Z with audio, then the 21 initials, 36 finals and 16 whole syllables Chinese children learn, each one playable.
Look it up: the chart
All 401 syllables in one grid — initials down the side, finals across the top, four tones and example characters in every cell.
What pinyin is made of
A Mandarin syllable has three layers, and pinyin marks all of them. Take xiǎng (to think):
An initial
The consonant it starts with — x here, or nothing at all (ān, é). There are 21 of them.
A final
The vowel part — iang here. Textbooks list 24, the full set is 36.
A tone
The pitch mark — ǎ is the third tone. Four tones plus the neutral tone, and they change the meaning of a word.
A spelling rule
y, w and ü are written differently depending on what comes before them — i becomes yi, jun is really j + ün.
Practice tools
- Chinese to pinyinPaste any Chinese text and get the pinyin of every word — with tone marks, audio and one-click saving to your study list.
- Pinyin alphabetAll 26 letters, the 21 initials, 36 finals, 16 whole syllables and the four tones — with audio.
- Pinyin chartEvery Mandarin syllable in one grid, arranged by initial and final, with all four tones.
- Tone trainerRecord a syllable in the browser and compare your pitch curve with a native speaker.
- Tone pairsThe 16 tone combinations plus the sandhi rules, one syllable at a time.
- Minimal pairsTrain your ear on zh/z, j/q, an/ang and 15 more pairs that learners mix up.
- ShadowingRepeat after a word or sentence and get scored on pitch, rhythm and speed.
Characters that start with each letter
Every character whose pinyin begins with that letter, most common first — the fastest way to see how one sound spreads across many characters.
Common questions
- What is pinyin?
- Pinyin is the official way of writing Mandarin pronunciation with the Latin alphabet. It was published in 1958 and is used in schools in China, in dictionaries, and on every phone keyboard — typing Chinese means typing pinyin. It is a pronunciation guide, not a writing system: Chinese itself is written in characters.
- Is pinyin the same as Chinese characters?
- No, and the two do different jobs. Characters carry meaning and are what you read and write; pinyin only records sound. Many characters share one pinyin syllable (shì covers 是, 事, 市, 试 …), which is why learning characters is a separate job from learning pronunciation.
- How long does it take to learn pinyin?
- The letters, initials and finals take a few days; the tones take weeks of listening. Recognising the four tones reliably is the part that decides how good your Mandarin sounds, so it is worth drilling early — that is what the tone trainer and tone pairs are for.