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Pinyin chart with audio

Rows are initials, columns are finals. Tap a syllable to open its four tones and hear each one.

Tone to play
Initialaoeaieiaoouanenangengongeriiaieiaoiuianiniangingionguuauouaiuiuanunuanguengüüeüanün
—
b
p
m
f
d
t
n
l
g
k
h
j
q
x
zh
ch
sh
r
z
c
s

Tap a syllable to hear it.

Sounds English doesn't have

  • zh, ch, sh, r — the tongue curls back: zh ≈ a hard “j”, ch ≈ “ch” with a puff, sh ≈ “sh” with the tongue back, r ≈ the “s” in “measure”.
  • j, q, x — the tongue lies flat against the lower teeth: j ≈ “j” in “jeep”, q ≈ “ch” in “cheap”, x ≈ between “s” and “sh”.
  • z, c, s — “dz”, “ts” with a puff, “s”. After them i is a buzz, not “ee”: zi, si.
  • -n and -ng are different finals: an as in “pan”, ang as in “song”.
  • ü — say “ee” with your lips rounded as for “oo”; e is close to the “u” in “bud”.

Check how you hear and say the tones in the tone test.

Questions and answers

How many syllables does Mandarin have?

About 400 without tones — 401 in this chart. With tones there are roughly 1,300 in use, since not every syllable occurs in all four tones.

What are initials and finals?

The initial is a syllable's first consonant (b, zh, x…); the final is the rest (a, ian, ong…). A syllable can start with a vowel: then it's spelled with y- or w- (yi, wu, yu).

Why is ü written u after j, q, x?

After j, q and x there is no plain “u” sound, so the dots are dropped: ju, qu, xu are said jü, qü, xü. After n and l the dots stay, because nü “woman” and nu “slave” are different syllables.

Whose recordings are these?

Every syllable is read by a native Mandarin speaker (the audio-cmn project, CC BY-SA).

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