What is pinyin
Pinyin (拼音, pīnyīn) is the official way to write Chinese sounds in Latin letters. A character does not show how to read it; pinyin does. Chinese schoolchildren, dictionaries and phone keyboards all use it, and everyone who learns Chinese starts with it.
Every syllable has three parts: the initial, the consonant at the start (b, zh, x); the final, everything else (a, ang, üe); and the tone. In the table, rows are initials, columns are finals, and the syllable sits where they meet. An empty cell means Chinese has no such syllable.
There are not many syllables, about four hundred. So you can work through the pronunciation of the whole language in a few weeks: after that, new words are built from syllables you already know.
The four tones
The same syllable is said with four melodies, and the melody changes the meaning. Listen to the syllable ma in each tone:
There is also a neutral tone, short and unstressed, written with no mark. Tones are easier to hear and copy than to learn from a description: in the tone trainer you can guess them by ear and compare the melody of your voice with the speaker’s.
Letters that don’t sound like English
Pinyin uses Latin letters for Chinese sounds, and some of them sound nothing like what an English reader would guess.
- zh, ch, sh, r: the tip of the tongue curls back. Zh is close to the “j” in “judge”, ch to the “ch” in “church”, sh to the “sh” in “shirt”, all with the tongue curled back; r is close to the “s” in “pleasure”, not an English “r”.
- j, q, x: soft, with the tip of the tongue behind the lower teeth. J is like the “j” in “jeep”, q like the “ch” in “cheese”, x like the “sh” in “she”. X is never “ks” or “z”.
- b — p, d — t, g — k differ in breath, not in voicing. B is the “p” of “spin”, with no puff of air; p is the “p” of “pin”, with a strong puff.
- z and c: z is close to the “ds” in “kids”, c to the “ts” in “cats” with a puff of air. Never the English “z” or “k”.
- h: rougher than the English “h”, close to the “ch” in Scottish “loch”.
- ü: lips rounded as for “oo”, tongue as for “ee”, like French “u” or German “ü”. After j, q, x and y the dots are not written, but the sound is the same: ju, qu, xu, yu are said with ü.
- e: not the “e” of “bed” but a deep sound, like the “u” in “fun” said further back.
- i after z, c, s is not “ee”: it is a buzzing vowel that just carries on the consonant. After zh, ch, sh, r it sounds close to the “ir” in American “shirt”.
- -n and -ng are different sounds: -n as in “fan”, -ng as in “fang”. Mixing them up changes the word.
Spelling rules that trip people up
- Syllables with no initial that start with i, u or ü are written with y and w: i → yi, u → wu, ü → yu, ia → ya, uo → wo. That is why the first row of the table has yi, wu and yu.
- The finals iou, uei and uen are shortened to iu, ui and un after a consonant: liu, gui, lun. They are still said in full.
- The tone mark goes over a vowel: over a if there is one; otherwise over o or e; in iu and ui, over the last letter.
FAQ
How many syllables does Chinese have?
About four hundred, not counting tones: this table has 412, rare ones included. With tones it comes to about 1,300 syllables, since not every syllable exists in all four tones.
Does Chinese have an alphabet?
No. Chinese is written in characters, and pinyin is not an alphabet but a way to write the pronunciation in Latin letters. It is learned first so you can read new words and type on a keyboard.
Do I need pinyin if I only want to speak?
Yes. Pinyin is the only way to see how a word is pronounced: a character does not tell you. Without it you cannot use a dictionary or remember the tones of new words.
Can I read pinyin like English?
Only partly. Many letters stand for different sounds than in English: x is close to "sh", q to "ch", zh to "j", and c to "ts". Learn the few tricky letters once, then pinyin reads very regularly: each spelling always sounds the same.
How do I type Chinese with pinyin?
Add the Chinese (Pinyin) keyboard on your phone or computer. Type a syllable in Latin letters without tones, for example nihao, and pick the characters you need from the suggestions.
Pinyin and tones are the first section of the course
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