This pinyin table is a complete listing of all
Hanyu Pinyin syllables used in
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912–1949). ...
. Each syllable in a cell is composed of an
initial
In a written or published work, an initial is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter (books), chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is ultimately derived from the Latin ''initiālis'', which means '' ...
(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
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
entries in this page can be compared to syllables using the (unromanized)
Zhuyin phonetic system in the
Zhuyin table page.
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''. Certain combinations are treated in a special way:
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:
*"uan" and "ian" forming "uanian", which could be interpreted as:
**"uan-ian"
**"uan-i-an" or
**"u-en-i-an"
*the syllables are written "wan" and "yan" which results in the more distinct "wenyan"
There are discrepancies between the
Bopomofo
Bopomofo, also called Zhuyin Fuhao ( ; ), or simply Zhuyin, is a Chinese transliteration, transliteration system for Standard Chinese and other Sinitic languages. It is the principal method of teaching Chinese Mandarin pronunciation in Taiwa ...
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) 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)), 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:
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There are also a very small number of syllables consisting only of consonants: m (呣), n (嗯), ng (嗯), hm (噷), hng (哼).
Erhua contraction
Additional syllables in pinyin exist to represent the
erhua phenomenon by combining the affected syllable with an ''-r'' ending, rather than transcribing 兒/儿 as a separate ''ér'' syllable. This can be seen as analogous to certain contractions in English such as "they're" in place of "they are".
See also
*
Wade–Giles table
*
Palladius table
*
Zhuyin table
*
Cyrillization of Chinese
*
Comparison of Chinese transcription systems
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.
Pinyin