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 and a final. 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 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. 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:
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:
There are discrepancies between the Bopomofo 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 挼, 扽, 忒 are not used in guoyu. Likewise the variant sound 孿 is not recognized in putonghua, or it is folded into. The reading of 厓 is included in the pinyin table. However, this reading is only recognized as an old reading in putonghua, while it is standard for several characters in guoyu. A few readings reflect a Standard Chinese approximation of a regionalism that is otherwise never encountered in either putonghua or guoyu. For instance, is a borrowing from Shanghainese that is common enough to be included in most large dictionaries, but is usually labeled as a nonstandard regionalism, with the local reading viau , which is approximated in Standard Chinese as fiào.

Overall table

Final is in Group a or is a direct combination of:
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. 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.
Syllable Resultbanrpirmianrfurdianrdingrtangrtuirnarnürgerganrkourkongrhairhaorhuarhuorhuirjinrxiarxianrzhershirshuirwanrwor
initialbpmfddttnnggkkhhhhhjxxzhshsh
finalaniianuianinganguiaüeanouongaiaouauouiiniaianuiuanuo
er finalererererererererererererererererererererererererererer