like the ch in cheese, said with the tongue flat and the lips spread
七 qīseven
Not a k sound, and never kw as in queen.
Reading · pinyin
Pinyin, sound by sound.
Pinyin writes Mandarin in the letters you already know. It is not a crutch and not a beginner's system: it is the official spelling in mainland China, it is what children learn first, and it is how everyone types Chinese on a phone. Learn it properly in a week and you can say any syllable correctly on sight.
How a syllable is built
Every Mandarin syllable is at most three pieces: an initial consonant, a final, and a tone over the whole thing. There are about 21 initials and 35 finals, and only some of the combinations exist, which is why Mandarin has roughly 400 different syllables before tones and about 1,300 with them.
hInitialthe consonant at the front, and some syllables have none
aoFinalthe vowel and anything after it
ˇTonethe pitch shape, written over the main vowel
好hǎogood
The eight that catch everyone
Most of pinyin says what an English speaker expects. These do not, and they are worth ten minutes now rather than a year of being misunderstood.
like the sh in sheep, tongue flat, lips spread
谢谢 xièxiethank you
Not ks and not z.
like the j in jam, with the tongue curled back
中国 ZhōngguóChina
Not the s in measure.
ts, as at the end of cats
菜 càidish, vegetable
Never a k or an s on its own.
dz, as at the end of kids
再见 zàijiàngoodbye
Not the z in zoo.
between the English r and the s in pleasure, tongue curled
人 rénperson
Not a rolled r.
say ee, then round your lips as if to whistle
女 nǚwoman
Typed as v on a Chinese keyboard, so nǚ is nv.
on its own, closer to the u in the English but
喝 hēto drink
Not the e in bed, except in ie and üe.
Spellings that hide a sound
Pinyin shortens some finals to keep syllables compact. The missing letter is still said, so these look irregular until you know what was taken out.
| Written | What is going on | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ü after j, q, x and y | loses its dots, because those four are never followed by plain u | ju, qu, xu, yu are all said with ü |
| iu | is short for iou, and you can hear the o in it | liù, six, sounds like lee-oh |
| ui | is short for uei, and the e is there in speech | duì, correct, sounds like dway |
| un | is short for uen | chūn, spring, has a faint e in the middle |
| i after z, c, s, zh, ch, sh and r | is not ee at all. It is a buzz held on the consonant itself | sì, four, and shì, to be, share no vowel with nǐ |
| y and w at the start | are spelling helpers, not new sounds. They mark a syllable that begins with i or u | yī is i with a tone, wǔ is u with a tone |
Where the tone mark goes
One mark per syllable, and it sits on the main vowel. The rule is short: if there is an a, it goes on the a. If there is no a but there is an e or an o, it goes on that. Otherwise it goes on the last vowel. That is the whole rule, and it explains hǎo, xiè and duì.
Why this matters more than it looks
A tone mark in the wrong place is not a typo, it is a different syllable division, and readers will parse the word wrongly before they reach the meaning. Every line on this site is checked by a script that splits the pinyin into syllables and confirms the mark sits where the rule says it should.