Pinyin table

This pinyin table is a complete listing of all Hanyu Pinyin syllables used in Standard Chinese. Each syllable in a cell is composed of an initial (columns) and a final (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 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 entries in this page can be compared to syllables using the (non-romanized) Zhuyin phonetic system in the Zhuyin table page.

NOTE: many syllables are not pronounced similarly to the English conventions. For a more thorough explanation, please refer to the main Pinyin article.

Finals 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 final begins with an i, it is replaced with a y
• if the final begins with an u, it is replaced with a w
• if the final 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 tables and the pinyin table due to the few standardization differences of a few slight characters between the mainland standard putonghua and the Taiwanese standard guoyu. For example, the variant sounds 挼 (ruá; ㄖㄨㄚˊ), 扽 (dèn; ㄉㄣˋ), 忒 (tēi; ㄊㄟ) are not used in guoyu. Likewise the variant sound 孿 (lüán; ㄌㄩㄢˊ) is not recognized in putonghua, or it is folded into (luán; ㄌㄨㄢˊ).

Overall table

Colour Legend:

"regular" initial or final Final is in Group a or is a direct combination of: i+Group a final u+Group a final ü+Group a final

Final of i, u, ü groups is a modified combination of: i+Group a final u+Group a final ü+Group a final

syllable is direct combination of initial and final (or follows rules for no-initial syllables outlined at the top of the page)

syllable is modified combination of initial and final

er (儿/兒) 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" 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

External links

• Standard Mandarin Pinyin Table The complete listing of all Pinyin syllables used in Standard Chinese, along with native speaker pronunciation for each syllable.
• Pinyin table Pinyin table, syllables are pronounced in all four tones.
• Pinyin Chart for Web Pinyin Chart for Web, every available tones in the Chinese language included.
• Pinyin Chart for iPad Pinyin Chart app for iPad, every available tones in the Chinese language included.
• Pinyin Chart for iPhone Pinyin Chart app for iPhone, every available tones in the Chinese language included.
• Pinyin Table for Android Pinyin Table for Android, every available tones in the Chinese language included.