Pronunciation · 拼音
What is pinyin?
Pinyin spells a Mandarin syllable in roman letters. It is not the English alphabet. It is not a speaking course. This page does not host a chart or a recording.
Written October 1, 2026. This page does not host a recording of ours.
Pinyin is a romanization of Mandarin syllables. The letters look familiar. They need not be read the way English reads them. This page names that stick.
A search for a chart, an alphabet course, and English lookalikes is asking for a miniature syllabus. The four marks already have a note. A line you can say twice already has a workbench. This page does not reprint a syllable grid, and it does not host a recording.
Pinyin spells the syllable
Pinyin, on this page, is the roman-letter spelling of a Mandarin syllable. It is a writing tool for sound. It is not a replacement for characters.
The ISO 7098 romanization page hosted by the Ministry of Education says: “中华人民共和国全国人民代表大会（1958年2月11日）正式通过的汉语拼音方案，被用来拼写中文。” The Hanyu Pinyin scheme adopted by the National People’s Congress on 11 February 1958 is what is used to spell Chinese. The same page says: “每个汉字代表一个音节，每个音节有四个声调，也可以没有声调。” Each Chinese character stands for a syllable. Each syllable has four tones, or it can have none.
The sentence bank already writes that spelling with marks. The first line is 你好 / nǐ hǎo. Those letters are the scheme at work. They are not a promise that the greeting is already yours.
The letters need not be English sounds
Beginner pages often teach pinyin by mapping each letter onto an English lookalike. That mapping is a teaching habit. It is not the claim on the ISO page we read.
ISO 7098 says: “但是，应该承认，所达到的图形写法不一定总能按照通常使用该转换字母表的文字（或者所有语言）的语音习惯正确地发音。” The roman-letter spelling may not match the usual pronunciation habits of languages that use that alphabet. English is one of those languages. Seeing a familiar letter is not the same as having the Mandarin sound.
This page will not print an English-lookalike table. If the job is to hear which of two sounds arrived, that note is how to hear a Mandarin tone pair.
The scheme has tables this page will not reprint
The 1958 scheme is more than the two sentences above. It has tables.
The Ministry of Education page titled 汉语拼音方案 is dated 1 February 1958 and lists an attachment named 汉语拼音方案.pdf. This site did not extract that PDF for this note. A public-domain transcription on Wikisource of the same scheme includes a section headed 二 声母表 and a section headed 三 韵母表. Note (4) on that transcription says: “i行的韵母，前面沒有声母的时候，写成 yi（衣），ya（呀），ye（耶），yao（腰），you（憂），yan（烟），yin（因），yang（央），ying（英），yong（雍）。” The same note says: “u行的韵母，前面沒有声母的时候，写成 wu（烏），wa（蛙），wo（窩），wai（歪），wei（威），wan（弯），wen（溫），wang（汪），weng（翁）。” Those rows are not the single spellings yi and wu.
ISO 7098 also names 普通话声韵拼合总表: a combination table of initials and finals, with a first-tone mark printed on every syllable to show where the diacritic goes. That ISO page does not print the cells, and it does not give a cell count. Teaching posters print their own grids and their own counts. This page will not reprint those tables, and it will not choose a poster number as the scheme.
Tone marks already have a page
The marks that change a syllable’s meaning are what are the four tones in Mandarin.
The same ISO 7098 page says the light tone, sometimes called a fifth tone, is unmarked. It also says that in ordinary use the tone marks should be written, though they may be omitted for convenience. This page will not turn that convenience clause into a law that beginners should drop the marks. The sentence bank writes them.
A line you can say is still the sentence bank
Finishing a pinyin chart is not week one on this site. Week one is still one spoken line.
If you are at zero, the starting path is how to start learning Chinese. Open the sentence bank when the job in front of you is a line a person can hear. This page does not rank a pinyin app. It does not host a recording.
What waits until another page
This site has not yet published a recorded contrast of our own. Until that file exists, this page will not stand in for it.
| The pinyin search | What this page measures |
|---|---|
| A Chinese alphabet | A 1958 romanization for Mandarin syllables |
| English lookalike sounds | Letters that need not match English habits |
| An audio syllable grid | Not this page |
| A count on a teaching poster | Not the 1958 scheme, and not reprinted here |
| Best pinyin app | This page does not rank apps |
What this page will not tell you
It will not hand you a daily timetable. It will not publish a syllable count. It will not rank a pinyin app. Open one line in the sentence bank. The four marks sit on the tones note. Hearing which of two sounds you heard sits on the pair note.
Questions that still sit on the table
What is pinyin?
The 1958 romanization used to spell Mandarin syllables.
Is pinyin the Chinese alphabet?
The 1958 scheme has a Latin letter list used to spell syllables. That is not an English alphabet course, and it is not a replacement for characters.
How many pinyin sounds are there?
The ISO 7098 page this site cites names a Mandarin initial-final combination table. That page does not print the cells. It does not give a cell count. This page will not pick a poster number and call it the 1958 scheme. If the job is a line you can say twice, open the sentence bank.
Should I learn pinyin or characters first?
Week one on this site is still one spoken line, written in pinyin with tone marks. Characters stay on their own calendar. That calendar is the note on should I learn Chinese characters. Open how to start learning Chinese if you are at zero.
What is the best app for learning pinyin?
This page does not rank apps.
Sources
- Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, hosting ISO 7098-1991, “文献工作―中文罗马字母拼写法” (read 1 October 2026).
- Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, “汉语拼音方案”, with the attachment 汉语拼音方案.pdf (page read 1 October 2026; PDF text not extracted for this note).
- Wikisource transcription of 《汉语拼音方案》 (read 1 October 2026). Public-domain scheme text. Used here for the table headings and note (4). It is not a substitute for the Ministry PDF.
Spell the syllable. Say the line on the workbench. The chart can wait.
Version 1. Recheck when the Ministry ISO page changes §0.1.2, §2, or §3.1, when the scheme PDF is extracted on this site, or every six months.