Basics

Pinyin Introduction

Pinyin is the official romanization of Mandarin Chinese. It uses Latin letters to represent sounds. Every Chinese syllable is made of three parts:

Initial — the starting consonant (e.g. b, p, m, zh).
Final — the vowel and any trailing consonant (e.g. a, ao, ang).
Tone — a pitch contour marked over the vowel.

Examples: mā (妈, mother), bā (八, eight), zhōng (中, middle).

Some letters sound different from English: c = "ts", q = "ch", x = "sh", zh = "j".

Quiz

Pick the best answer for each question. You get feedback right away.

Which three parts make up a Chinese syllable?
In Pinyin, the letter "q" is pronounced closest to:
Which is a valid Pinyin syllable?