Pinyin Table

Each syllable in a cell is composed of an initial (columns) and a final (rows). An empty cell indicates that the corresponding syllable does not exist in Standard Chinese.

The below table indicates possible combinations of initials and finals in Standard Chinese, but does not indicate tones, which are equally important to the proper pronunciation of Chinese. Although some initial-final combinations have some syllables using each of the five different tones, most do not. Some utilize only one tone.

Pinyin entries in this page can be compared to syllables using the (unromanized) Zhuyin phonetic system in the Zhuyin table page.

Finals are grouped into subsets a, i, u and ü.

i, u and ü groupings indicate a combination of those finals with finals from Group a. For example:

Most syllables are a combination of an initial and a final. However, some syllables have no initials. This is shown in Pinyin as follows:

• if the syllable begins with an i, it is replaced with a y
• if the syllable begins with an u, it is replaced with a w
• if the syllable begins with an ü, it is replaced with yu
• exceptions to the rules above are indicated by yellow in the table's no initial column:

Note that the y, w, and yu replacements above do not change the pronunciation of the final in the final-only syllable. They are used to avoid ambiguity when writing words in pinyin. For example, instead of:

• "uen" and "ian" forming "uenian", which could be interpreted as:
  • "uen-ian"
  • "uen-i-an" or
  • "u-en-i-an"
• the syllables are written "wen" and "yan" which results in the more distinct "wenyan"

There are discrepancies between the Bopomofo tables and the pinyin table due to some minor differences between the Mainland standard, putonghua, and the Taiwanese standard, guoyu, in the standard readings of characters. For example, the variant sounds 挼 (ruá; ㄖㄨㄚˊ), 扽 (dèn; ㄉㄣˋ), 忒 (tēi; ㄊㄟ) are not used in guoyu. Likewise the variant sound 孿 (lüán; ㄌㄩㄢˊ) is not recognized in putonghua, or it is folded into (luán; ㄌㄨㄢˊ). A few readings reflect a Standard Chinese approximation of a regionalism that is otherwise never encountered in either putonghua or guoyu. For instance, 覅 (fiào; ㄈㄧㄠˋ) is a borrowing from Shanghainese (and other dialects of Wu Chinese) that are commonly used, and are thus included in most large dictionaries, even though it is usually labeled as a nonstandard regionalism (方, short for 方言 (topolect)), with the local reading viau [vjɔ], which is approximated in Standard Chinese as fiào.

Syllables in italics are considered nonstandard, and only exist in the form of regionalisms, neologisms or slang.

Color Legend:

"regular" initial or final Final is in Group a or is a direct combination of: i+Group a final u+Group a final ü+Group a final

Final of i, u, ü groups is a modified combination of: i+Group a final u+Group a final ü+Group a final

syllable is direct combination of initial and final (or follows rules for no-initial syllables outlined at the top of the page)

syllable is modified combination of initial and final

There are also a very small number of syllables consisting only of consonants: m (呣), n (嗯), ng (嗯), hm (噷), hng (哼).