Pinyin: The Chinese Romanisation System

Level: HSK 1. Chinese characters do not tell you how to say them, so Mandarin has an official spelling system in Latin letters: pinyin — 拼音 (pīnyīn), literally “spell-sound”. Learn how a pinyin syllable is put together and you can read the pronunciation of any word from a dictionary or textbook.

What pinyin is

Pinyin is the standard romanisation of Mandarin, set by the Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet. It does not replace characters — 你好 (nǐ hǎo) is still written with characters — but it writes the sound of each character so a learner can say it. Every full syllable has three parts:

1. an initial — 声母 (shēngmǔ) — the opening consonant, like the n in 你 (nǐ);
2. a final — 韵母 (yùnmǔ) — the vowel or vowel-plus-ending that follows, like the ǐ in 你 (nǐ);
3. a tone — the pitch, shown by a mark over the main vowel.

Some syllables have no initial at all (just a final, like 爱 (ài), “to love”), but every full syllable has a final and a tone.

Initials and finals

There are about 21 initials (consonant starts) and a set of finals (vowel endings). You do not memorise a list; you meet them syllable by syllable. The table shows the structure, not every combination:

The spelling rules that surprise learners

Pinyin has a few fixed conventions. They are not pronunciation changes — the sound is the same — but the written form changes:

• No initial → y or w. When a final starting with i, u or ü has no initial in front of it, you write y or w: i → yi, in → yin, ing → ying; u → wu; ü → yu, üe → yue.
• ü after j, q, x loses its dots. Because j, q, x never go with a plain u, the ü in ju, qu, xu is written without dots. But after n and l the dots stay — nü, 女 (nǚ, woman), must be kept apart from nu, 努 (nǔ).
• Shortened finals. After an initial, iou is written iu, as in 六 (liù); uei is written ui, as in 贵 (guì); and uen is written un, as in 论 (lùn).

Where the tone mark goes

A syllable carries one tone, shown by a mark (ā á ǎ à) over the main vowel. The rule for which vowel:

• If there is an a, the mark goes on it: hǎo, xiǎng.
• No a? Put it on o or e: gǒu, xuě.
• For iu and ui, the mark goes on the second vowel: liù, guì.
• The dot on i is dropped when it takes the mark: nǐ, not nǐ with a dot.

The neutral (light) tone has no mark at all, as in the particle 吗 (ma) or the 子 (zi) in 桌子 (zhuōzi, table).

Pinyin in action

Practice

Where to go next

Pinyin tells you how to spell a sound; the Chinese pronunciation overview drills the tones and tricky initials behind it. Then put syllables to work with the verb 是 (shì) and browse the Chinese grammar section. New here? Start at Start Learning Chinese Here.

Quiz