Pinyin Syllables

Have you ever wondered how to pronounce a Chinese name like Ding Junhui (snooker player). It's "ding joon-hway", not "ding june-wee" or similar, or the Chinese president's: Xi Jinping... It's "sshee jin-ping", not "zee" or "zeye" "jin-ping". See below for easy help with pronouncing Chinese (minus tones)... See more on Chinese names.

There are only 413 syllables in common use, which represent thousands of Chinese characters. See below for an instant reference between the pinyin (left) and intuitive English pronunciation (right) for each syllable. Over half of pinyin is pronounced as you'd expect, but that leaves about half that isn't...

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The pronunciation for pinyin doesn’t usually vary with tone, so tone markers aren't shown here. There are 4 exceptions however. When pinyin de, ge, ne and zi have tones 1 to 4 they are pronounced “der”, “ger”, “ner” and “dzrr” respectively, but when they have a light tone (tone 5) they are pronounced “duh” “guh”, “nuh” and “dzuh” respectively.