What Is Pinyin? Hanyu Pinyin Explained

Pinyin is the standard way to write the sounds of Mandarin using the Latin alphabet. The full name is Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音, hàn yǔ pīn yīn), “Han language spelling”. It gives you the sound of a character, written in letters with a mark above the vowel for the tone: 你好 is written nǐ hǎo. The full syllable chart, with Taiwan audio for every syllable, is on the pinyin chart, and you can use it alongside this page.

The rest of this page covers what pinyin is, what it is not, where it came from, and how it fits into learning Traditional Chinese in Taiwan.

What pinyin is

A pinyin syllable has three parts: an initial consonant, a final, and a tone. In 好 (hǎo), h is the initial, ao is the final, and the mark over the a is the third tone. Some syllables have no initial, such as 愛 (ài). Mandarin has 21 initials, and the system uses y and w as spelling conventions for syllables that begin with i, u or ü.

Without tones, Mandarin has about 410 distinct syllables, which is the number the site’s pinyin chart is built on. Tones multiply that, and characters multiply it again. This is why one syllable such as shi stands for dozens of characters.

Pinyin uses 25 of the 26 letters of the alphabet (v is reserved, and input methods use it to type ü) plus ü. It also uses four tone marks on the vowel: ā, á, ǎ, à. The neutral tone has no mark. The rules for placing the mark are on the pinyin tone marks page.

What pinyin is not

• It is not English spelling. The letters do not have their English values. Q is not “kw”, x is not “ks”, and zh is not a cluster of “z” and “h”. Treat it as a code with its own rules. The guide to j, q, x and ü gives the sounds one at a time.
• It is not a writing system for Chinese. Chinese is written with characters. Pinyin is a tool for learning and typing pronunciation, and it cannot replace characters because so many characters share a syllable.
• It is not the only system. Zhuyin (Bopomofo, 注音符號) represents the same sounds with 37 symbols. Both systems describe the same standard pronunciation, and neither one changes how Mandarin sounds.
• It is not required to speak. Many speakers of Mandarin can talk fluently and use pinyin only to type.

Where pinyin came from

Hanyu Pinyin was designed in the 1950s by a group of linguists in China, among them Zhou Youguang, often called the “father of pinyin”. The National People’s Congress approved it on 11 February 1958. It replaced earlier systems such as Wade-Giles for most international uses. The International Organization for Standardization published it as ISO 7098 in 1982, and the United Nations began using it in 1986.

That history explains why pinyin is the default in most dictionaries, textbooks and apps built outside Taiwan, and in the Latin spellings of place names such as Beijing. It also explains why you may see older romanisations such as Peking or Taipei, which come from earlier systems; Taipei is still the official spelling.

Pinyin in Taiwan

Taiwan’s relationship with romanisation is more mixed. Taiwanese schools teach children Zhuyin first. A child learns the 37 symbols before learning to read characters, and the symbols appear beside characters in children’s books. Pinyin is not the starting point.

For Latin-letter spellings, Taiwan has used several systems over the decades. Between 2002 and 2008 the official system was Tongyong Pinyin, a local variant. From 1 January 2009 the Ministry of Education adopted Hanyu Pinyin as the standard. Because individuals and local governments could still choose their own spellings, street signs and names in Taiwan show a mix, and you will see some that do not match any one system. This is why a Taiwanese friend’s name or a street’s romanisation may not follow pinyin exactly.

In practice, a learner of Traditional Chinese meets pinyin in three places: dictionaries and apps (Pleco, flashcard decks), typing on a phone or computer, and international textbooks. Dangdai, the textbook series edited by NTNU’s Mandarin Training Center, gives both pinyin and Zhuyin. For a longer comparison of the two systems, see Bopomofo vs pinyin.

A worked example

Take 謝謝. In pinyin it is xiè xie, in Zhuyin ㄒㄧㄝˋ ˙ㄒㄧㄝ. The two systems carry the same information: the same initial (x, ㄒ), the same final (ie, ㄧㄝ), a fourth tone on the first syllable and a neutral second syllable. Pinyin marks the tone above the vowel and leaves the neutral tone unmarked, while Zhuyin leaves the first tone unmarked and puts a dot before a neutral syllable. Once you can read one, the other is a matter of matching symbols to letters, and the chart’s Zhuyin-pinyin table does that for you.

Should you learn it?

Yes, for most adult learners, and it is quick. Here is a sensible order:

1. Learn the sounds from audio first. Use the pinyin chart to hear each syllable.
2. Learn the spelling rules for ü, the tone marks and the y and w spelling rules.
3. Add Zhuyin if you plan to live in Taiwan, read children’s books or type with a Zhuyin keyboard.
4. Move to characters as soon as you have a basic vocabulary, and let pinyin step back. The question of when is covered in the guide to reading Chinese without pinyin.

Zhong lets you choose Pinyin or Zhuyin for each course, so you can start with whichever you already know.

Related reading

• Pinyin chart with Taiwan audio
• Bopomofo vs pinyin: which should you learn?
• Pinyin tone marks: where they go
• How to pronounce j, q, x, ü and -n vs -ng