Every Chinese character is one syllable, and every syllable has three parts: a starting consonant, a vowel sound, and a tone. Pinyin, the official way of writing Chinese in the Latin alphabet, spells all three — the tone as a mark over the vowel.
Pinyin uses English letters, but several of them stand for quite different sounds: q is nothing like English q, and x is nothing like English x. This guide goes through them, and through the tones, which matter as much as the sounds. Every vocabulary card shows its pinyin next to the characters. Press 🔊 next to any example to hear it.
If you only remember five things, make it these. Each one is covered in more detail further down.
The same syllable with a different tone is a different word. A wrong tone isn't an accent — it's a different word, or no word at all.
q, x, c, z, zh and r in particular sound nothing like their English values. Learn them once and pinyin becomes completely regular.
Say 'ee' with your lips rounded for 'oo'. After j, q, x and y it is written plain u — but it is still ü.
A syllable written without a tone mark has the neutral tone: short, unstressed, and quick.
The cards still write both as third tones, so you have to make the change yourself. 你好 is written nǐ hǎo and said ní hǎo.
Each tone is a pitch shape, and it belongs to the syllable the way a vowel does. Think of your own speaking range from low to high: the first tone sits high, the second climbs, the third goes low, the fourth drops. The mark over the vowel draws the shape.
High and level — hold one steady note near the top of your voice, as if singing.
Rising, from the middle of your voice to the top — like the surprised 'What?' in English.
Low. Said on its own or at the end of a phrase, it dips to the bottom of your voice and rises again. In the middle of a sentence it usually just stays low.
Falling sharply from high to low — like a firm 'No!' or a decisive 'Done.'
No mark: short and light, with no shape of its own. Its pitch simply follows from the syllable before. Very common on the second half of everyday words and on particles.
The tone mark sits on a or e if the syllable has one; on the o of ou; otherwise on the last vowel. That is why 贵 is guì and 六 is liù.
f, l, m, n, s, w and y sound much as in English. The rest are below — and the first thing to know is that b and p, d and t, g and k are told apart not by voicing, as in English, but by a puff of air.
No puff of air: like the p in 'spin', the t in 'stop', the k in 'skin'. To an English ear they can sound halfway between b and p.
A strong puff of air — stronger than English p, t, k. Hold a hand in front of your mouth: you should feel it.
Made with the tip of the tongue down behind the lower teeth and the lips spread, as in a smile. j is a soft 'jee'; q is the same with a puff of air, close to the ch in 'cheese'; x is like 'sh', said with that smile.
These three are only ever followed by i or ü — so after them, u always means ü.
The tongue tip curls back toward the roof of the mouth. Then they are close to the j in 'judge', the ch in 'church' and the sh in 'shirt'.
Tongue curled back as for sh, but voiced: somewhere between English r and the s in 'pleasure'.
Tongue tip forward behind the teeth. z is like the 'ds' in 'kids'; c is like the 'ts' in 'cats', with a puff of air; s is an ordinary s.
Rougher than English h: a light rasp at the back of the mouth, like a softer version of the ch in Scottish 'loch'.
Everything after the consonant is the 'final'. A final is read as a whole, and some do not sound the way their letters suggest — ian and ui especially.
Like the a in 'father'.
Not the English e. An 'uh' made far back in the mouth with the lips unrounded — like 'duh', said deeper.
In ie and üe it is like the e in 'yes': 谢 xiè, 学 xué.
Like 'ee' in 'see'.
Not 'ee' at all: here the i just means 'hold the consonant and voice it'. 四 sì is a buzzing 'sz'; 是 shì is like 'shrr' with no real vowel.
Like 'oo' in 'food'.
Say 'ee', keep your tongue there, and round your lips tightly as for 'oo'. Written ü after n and l; after j, q, x and y the dots are dropped, but the sound is the same.
Like 'wo' — the 'aw' of 'law' with rounded lips and a short w in front.
Like 'eye'.
Like 'ay' in 'say'.
Like 'ow' in 'how'.
Like 'oh'.
Careful: 'yen', not 'yan'. The a is pulled up to an e sound by the i and n around it.
Short for uei: 'way', not 'wee'.
Short for iou: 'yo', as in 'Leo' said quickly.
an is 'ahn' with the n at the front of the mouth. ang ends in the 'ng' of 'song' and its a sits further back.
en is like the 'un' in 'fun'. eng is like the 'ung' in 'lung'.
in is 'een'. ing is the 'ing' of 'sing'.
Like 'oong': the 'ung' of 'lung' with rounded lips.
A curled r added to the end of a syllable, written 儿. It is typical of Beijing and northern speech; elsewhere you will often hear the word without it.
A few tones change depending on what follows. The cards write the changes for 不 and 一, because those words change all the time; the third-tone change is left for you to make.
Not marked on the cards. Whenever you see two third tones together, say the first one as a second tone.
不 is fourth tone, except before another fourth tone, where it becomes second. The cards write what you say. In the middle of some set phrases it goes neutral.
一 is first tone on its own, in counting and in ordinals. Before a fourth tone it becomes second; before any other tone, fourth. The cards write what you say.
Before any tone other than a third, a third tone stays low and never rises. Rising at the end is for the third tone said alone or at the end of a phrase.
Every card shows the characters with their pinyin beside them. Each syllable of pinyin is one character.
The four tone marks draw the pitch: ¯ high and level, ´ rising, ˇ low dip, ` falling.
The neutral tone: short and light (see The tones).
ü, with or without a tone mark. After j, q, x and y it is written u (see Vowels and endings).
不 and 一 are written with the tone you actually say. Other tone changes, like the one in 你好, are not written (see How tones change in speech).
The apostrophe marks where one syllable ends and the next begins, when a vowel would otherwise make it unclear: kě'ài is kě + ài.
A final r is the 儿 ending (see Vowels and endings).
Pinyin is spaced by word, not by character, so one word can run to several syllables. Names of people, places and languages begin with a capital letter.
Never learn a word as just its letters. Say it with its tones from the first time, and the tones stop being something extra to remember.
Tones are easiest to hear and to say in two-syllable words, where one shape runs into the next. Play the example words here and in your lessons, and copy the melody of the whole word.
In any lesson, the pronunciation settings let you slow the audio down without changing its pitch — which matters here, because the pitch is the tone.
The role-play in each lesson has you speak your character's lines aloud. Tones are learned in sentences, where they run together and change, as much as in single words.