What Is Pinyin?

Pinyin (拼音, literally "spell sound") is the official system for writing Mandarin Chinese pronunciation with the Latin alphabet. Every Chinese character maps to a pinyin syllable, so 你好 is written nǐ hǎo and 中国 is zhōng guó. It is how learners read pronunciation and how everyone types Chinese on a keyboard.

Characters → pinyin

你nǐ好hǎo

你好, nǐ hǎo, means hello.

One syllable, four tones

妈mā麻má马mǎ骂mà吗ma

The same "ma" becomes mother, hemp, horse or to scold depending on the tone.

Convert any Chinese to pinyin → English word to pinyin

How a pinyin syllable works

Every pinyin syllable is built from three parts: an initial (the starting consonant), a final (the vowel ending) and a tone (the pitch contour, marked above the vowel).

initial n + final i + tone ˇ = nǐ → 你

There are 23 initials (b, p, m, f, zh, x, q…) and about 35 finals (a, i, ao, ang, üe…). Some syllables have no initial at all: 爱 is just ài. Together they cover roughly 400 base syllables, which with tones give you every sound in Mandarin.

The four tones, and the mark above the letter

Mandarin is a tonal language, and pinyin writes tones as marks on the main vowel. Changing the tone changes the word, not just the accent.

Pinyin is a bridge, not the language

Chinese people read and write characters, not pinyin. Pinyin exists to help: children learn it in primary school before characters, dictionaries sort by it, and it is the standard way to type on a phone or computer. Type ni hao on a Chinese keyboard and 你好 appears.

So pinyin is the fastest way to start speaking Chinese, and the characters are what you graduate into. When you are ready, learn to write them stroke by stroke or browse everyday words in Chinese.

Pinyin dictionary

The pinyin of Chinese names, cities, brands and everyday words: each page shows the pinyin first, then the characters.