Pinyin

Hanyu Pinyin, often simply called pinyin , is the most widely used system for writing Chinese words using the Latin alphabet. It is officially known as the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet. The term Hanyu (汉语; 漢語) means Han language, referring to the Chinese language, while pinyin means spelled sounds.

Hanyu Pinyin
Script type	Alphabet romanisation
Creator	Pinyin Committee Zhou Youguang
Published	Template:Ubli
Official script	Template:Ubli
Languages	Standard Chinese

Pinyin is the standard romanisation system in China, Singapore, and Taiwan, and is also used by the United Nations. While it is commonly used for transliterating Standard Chinese across different regions, it is less prevalent in Taiwan. Pinyin helps in teaching Standard Chinese, which is usually written with Chinese characters, to students who are already familiar with the Latin alphabet. It is also used in computer input methods and to organise entries in certain Chinese dictionaries.

In Hanyu Pinyin, each Chinese syllable is broken down into an initial and a final. The initial is the starting consonant, and the final is a combination of one or more letters representing the rest of the syllable, which can include a medial (a semivowel before the main vowel), a nucleus vowel, and a coda (the final vowel or consonant). Diacritical marks are used to show the four tones in Standard Chinese, although these are often left out in contexts like spelling Chinese names in non-Chinese texts.

Hanyu Pinyin was developed in the 1950s by a team of Chinese linguists, including Wang Li, Lu Zhiwei, Li Jinxi, Luo Changpei, and Zhou Youguang, who is often called the father of pinyin. They drew on earlier romanisation systems to create this new method. Hanyu Pinyin was officially adopted at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress in 1958 and has undergone several revisions since then. In 1982, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) recognised Hanyu Pinyin as ISO 7098, and the United Nations began using it in 1986. Taiwan adopted Hanyu Pinyin as its official romanisation system in 2009, replacing the previous system, Tongyong Pinyin.

Syllables

Chinese phonology is typically explained using the concepts of initials (声母; shēngmǔ) and finals (韵母; yùnmǔ), which differ from the traditional consonant and vowel units used in most phonetic systems. In Standard Chinese, each syllable is represented by a combination of one initial and one final, with a few exceptions. One such exception is the special syllable "er" (儿; 兒), and another is when a trailing -r is added to a syllable, a feature known as erhua. While erhua is common in some regional dialects, it is rarely used in official publications.

While most initials consist of consonants, finals are not always simple vowels. In compound finals (复韵母; fùyùnmǔ), a "medial" sound is placed before the main vowel. For example, the medials [i] and [u] are pronounced with a tight opening at the beginning of a final. Some native Chinese speakers, especially when singing, pronounce yī (衣; 'clothes'), which is officially /í/, as /jí/, and wéi (围; 'to enclose'), which is officially /uěi/, as /wěi/ or /wuěi/.

These medials are often treated separately from the finals rather than as part of them, and this convention is reflected in the chart of finals below.

Initials

The conventional lexicographical order derived from bopomofo is:

b  p  m  f

d  t  n  l

g  k  h

j  q  x

zh  ch  sh  r

z  c  s

In each cell below, the pinyin letters assigned to each initial are accompanied by their phonetic realizations in brackets, notated according to the International Phonetic Alphabet.

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Alveolo-palatal	Velar
Plosive	unaspirated	b [p]	d [t]			g [k]
	aspirated	p [pʰ]	t [tʰ]			k [kʰ]
Nasal		m [m]	n [n]
Affricate	unaspirated		z [ts]	zh [ʈʂ]	j [tɕ]
	aspirated		c [tsʰ]	ch [ʈʂʰ]	q [tɕʰ]
Fricative		f [f]	s [s]	sh [ʂ]	x [ɕ]	h [x]
Liquid			l [l]	r [ɻ]~[ʐ]
Semivowel		y [j], [ɥ] and w [w]

Pinyin	IPA	Description
b	[p]	Unaspirated p, like in English spark.
p	[pʰ]	Strongly aspirated p, like in English pay.
m	[m]	Like the m in English may.
f	[f]	Like the f in English fair.
d	[t]	Unaspirated t, like in English stop.
t	[tʰ]	Strongly aspirated t, like in English take.
n	[n]	Like the n in English nay.
l	[l]~[ɾ]	Like the l in English lay.
g	[k]	Unaspirated k, like in English skill.
k	[kʰ]	Strongly aspirated k, like in English kiss.
h	[x]~Template:IPA blink	Varies between the h in English hat, and the ch in Scottish English loch.
j	[tɕ]	Alveolo-palatal, unaspirated. No direct equivalent in English, but similar to the ch in English churchyard.
q	[tɕʰ]	Alveolo-palatal, aspirated. No direct equivalent in English, but similar to the ch in English punchy.
x	[ɕ]	Alveolo-palatal, unaspirated. No direct equivalent in English, but similar to the sh in English push.
zh	[ʈʂ]~[d͡ʒ]	Retroflex, unaspirated. Like j in English jack.
ch	[ʈʂʰ]~[ʃ]	Retroflex, aspirated. Like ch in English church.
sh	[ʂ]~[ɹ̠̊˔]	Retroflex, unaspirated. Like sh in shirt.
r	[ɻ~ʐ]~[ɹ]	Retroflex. No direct equivalent in English, but varies between the r in English reduce and the s in English measure.
z	[ts]	Unaspirated. Like the zz in English pizza.
c	[tsʰ]	Aspirated. Like the ts in English bats.
s	[s]	Like the s in English say.
w	[w]	Like the w in English water.
y	[j], [ɥ]	Either like the y in English yes—or when followed by a u, see below.

Tones

Relative pitch changes of the four tones

In the pinyin system, four diacritical marks are used to indicate the tones of Mandarin: ā, á, ǎ, and à. There is no diacritic for the neutral tone, which is simply written as a. These diacritics are placed over the vowel that represents the syllable nucleus. If the vowel is missing, the diacritic is placed over the nearest available vowel. Tones are represented in pinyin but not in Chinese characters. When the tone mark is placed over an i, it replaces the dot above the i, as in yī.

1. The first tone (flat or high-level tone) is represented by a macron ⟨ˉ⟩ added to the pinyin vowel:

   ā ē ê̄ ī ō ū ǖ Ā Ē Ê̄ Ī Ō Ū Ǖ

2. The second tone (rising or high-rising tone) is denoted by an acute accent ⟨ˊ⟩:

   á é ế í ó ú ǘ Á É Ế Í Ó Ú Ǘ

3. The third tone (falling-rising or low tone) is marked by a caron ⟨ˇ⟩:

   ǎ ě ê̌ ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ Ǎ Ě Ê̌ Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ Ǚ

4. The fourth tone (falling or high-falling tone) is represented by a grave accent ⟨ˋ⟩:

   à è ề ì ò ù ǜ À È Ề Ì Ò Ù Ǜ

5. The fifth tone (neutral tone) is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark:

   a e ê i o u ü A E Ê I O U Ü

In dictionaries, neutral tone may be indicated by a dot preceding the syllable—e.g. Template:Tlit. When a neutral tone syllable has an alternative pronunciation in another tone, a combination of tone marks may be used: Template:Zhp may be pronounced either Template:Zhp or Template:Zhp.