This pinyin table is a complete listing of all
Hanyu Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...
syllables used in
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standa ...
. Each syllable in a cell is composed of an
initial
In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph tha ...
(columns) and a
final
Final, Finals or The Final may refer to:
*Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event
** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of con ...
(rows). An empty cell indicates that the corresponding syllable does not exist in Standard Chinese.
The below table indicates possible combinations of
initials and
finals
Final, Finals or The Final may refer to:
*Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event
** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of cont ...
in Standard Chinese, but does not indicate
tones, which are equally important to the proper pronunciation of Chinese. Although some initial-final combinations have some syllables using each of the five different tones, most do not. Some utilize only one tone.
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...
entries in this page can be compared to syllables using the (unromanized)
Zhuyin
Bopomofo (), or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, also named Zhuyin (), is a Chinese transliteration system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe ...
phonetic system in the
Zhuyin table page.
Finals
Final, Finals or The Final may refer to:
*Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event
** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of cont ...
are grouped into subsets ''a'', ''i'', ''u'' and ''ü''.
''i'', ''u'' and ''ü'' groupings indicate a combination of those finals with finals from Group ''a''. For example:
Most syllables are a combination of an initial and a final. However, some syllables have no initials. This is shown in Pinyin as follows:
*if the syllable begins with an ''i'', it is replaced with a ''y''
*if the syllable begins with an ''u'', it is replaced with a ''w''
*if the syllable begins with an ''ü'', it is replaced with ''yu''
*exceptions to the rules above are indicated by yellow in the table's ''no initial'' column:
Note that the ''y'', ''w'', and ''yu'' replacements above do not change the pronunciation of the final in the final-only syllable. They are used to avoid ambiguity when writing words in pinyin. For example, instead of:
*"uen" and "ian" forming "uenian", which could be interpreted as:
**"uen-ian"
**"uen-i-an" or
**"u-en-i-an"
*the syllables are written "wen" and "yan" which results in the more distinct "wenyan"
There are discrepancies between the
Bopomofo
Bopomofo (), or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, also named Zhuyin (), is a Chinese transliteration system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe ...
tables and the pinyin table due to some minor differences between the Mainland standard, ''putonghua'', and the Taiwanese standard, ''guoyu'', in the standard readings of characters. For example, the variant sounds (ruá; ), (dèn; ), (tēi; ) are not used in ''guoyu''. Likewise the variant sound (lüán; ) is not recognized in ''putonghua'', or it is folded into (luán; ). A few readings reflect a Standard Chinese approximation of a regionalism that is otherwise never encountered in either ''putonghua'' or ''guoyu''. For instance, (fiào; ) is a borrowing from Shanghainese (and other dialects of
Wu Chinese
The Wu languages (; Wu romanization and IPA: ''wu6 gniu6'' [] ( Shanghainese), ''ng2 gniu6'' [] (Suzhounese), Mandarin pinyin and IPA: ''Wúyǔ'' []) is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Zhejiang Provin ...
) that are commonly used, and are thus included in most large dictionaries, even though it is usually labeled as a nonstandard regionalism (, short for (
topolect
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of mai ...
)), with the local reading ''viau''
jɔ which is approximated in Standard Chinese as fiào.
Overall table
Syllables in ''italics'' are considered nonstandard, and only exist in the form of regionalisms, neologisms or slang.
::Color Legend:
::
There are also a very small number of syllables consisting only of consonants: m (呣), n (嗯), ng (嗯), hm (噷), hng (哼).
Ér (/) contraction
A few additional syllables are formed in pinyin by combining an initial-final combination from the table above with an additional er-final. Rather than two distinct syllables, the last "er" is contracted with the first combination, and therefore represented as one syllable (analogous to "they're" instead of "they are", and "isn't" instead of "is not" in English). This is called "
erhua
Erhua ( ); also called erization or rhotacization of syllable finals) is a phonological process that adds r-coloring or the "er" (注音：, common words: 、、) sound (transcribed in IPA as ) to syllables in spoken Mandarin Chinese. Erhuayin () i ...
" in Chinese.
''Attention: this is not a full table of all existing syllables of erhua. Instead, this is a presentation of pinyin's erhua forming.''
See also
*
Wade–Giles table
*
Palladius table
*
Zhuyin table
*
Cyrillization of Chinese
The Cyrillization of Chinese (''Hanyu Cyril Pinyin'') is the transcription of Chinese characters into the Cyrillic alphabet.
The Palladius System is the official Russian standard for transcribing Chinese into Russian, with variants existing for U ...
*
Comparison of Chinese transcription systems
This comparison of Standard Mandarin transcription systems comprises a list of all syllables which are considered phonemically distinguishable within Standard Mandarin.
Gwoyeu Romatzyh employs a different ''spelling'' for each tone, whereas ot ...
Notes
{{reflist, group=note
External links
Standard Mandarin Pinyin TableThe complete listing of all Pinyin syllables used in Standard Chinese, along with native speaker pronunciation for each syllable.
Pinyin tablePinyin table, syllables are pronounced in all four tones.
Pinyin Chart for WebPinyin Chart for Web, every available tones in the Chinese language included.
Pinyin Chart for iPadPinyin Chart app for iPad, every available tone in the Chinese language included.
Pinyin Chart for iPhonePinyin Chart app for iPhone, every available tones in the Chinese language included.
Pinyin Table for AndroidPinyin Table for Android, every available tones in the Chinese language included.
Romanization of Chinese
Mandarin words and phrases
Pinyin