How to Read Pinyin

Before you can read Chinese characters, you need a way to know how they sound. That's what pinyin is for. Pinyin spells out the sound of each Chinese syllable using the same alphabet you already know. Think of it as training wheels. It lets you say words and look them up long before you can read the characters themselves.

Here is the first word most people learn:

你好 nǐ hǎo (hello)

The characters are 你好. The pinyin underneath, nǐ hǎo, tells you how to say it.

Every syllable has three parts

A pinyin syllable is built from up to three pieces: a beginning sound, the rest of the sound, and a tone.

Take the syllable hǎo:

• h is the beginning sound, called the initial
• ao is the rest, called the final
• the mark over the a is the tone

So hǎo is h plus ao plus a tone. Almost every syllable works this way. A few skip the beginning sound and start right on the vowel, like 爱 ài (love).

The marks on top are tones

You'll see four marks over the vowels:

ā á ǎ à

Each one tells you the pitch of the syllable, whether your voice stays high, rises, dips, or falls. A syllable with no mark is said light and quick. Tones can change the meaning of a word, so they matter. They're a big enough topic to cover on their own, so for now just know that the mark is part of the spelling, not decoration.

Some letters do not sound like English

This is the part that trips people up. Pinyin uses familiar letters, but a few of them stand for sounds an English reader wouldn't expect. Trust the Chinese sound, not your English habit. A few common surprises:

• q sounds close to the "ch" in cheese. 七 qī (seven)
• x sounds close to a soft "sh," like in sheep. 谢谢 xièxie (thank you)
• c sounds like the "ts" in cats. 菜 cài (a dish)
• zh, ch, and sh are said with the tongue curled back, a bit heavier than English sh and ch.

Because of these, the safest way to learn the sounds is to listen to a recording and copy it, rather than guessing from the letters. Once you've heard each sound a few times, pinyin becomes easy to read.

The short version

Pinyin is a sound spelling for Chinese. Every syllable is a beginning sound, a final, and a tone mark. Most letters act the way you expect, a few don't, and your ears are the best guide. For your whole first stretch of learning, pinyin is how you'll read and say new words, so it's worth getting comfortable with early.