Interactive Pinyin Chart
Explore 408 Mandarin Pinyin syllables, compare four tones and hear example characters with Mandarin audio. Find sounds by initial or syllable.
Find a syllable or choose an initial.
Select a tone and hear the example.
Repeat, then listen for the sound in context.
mā
Example character: 妈 · mā
Device-generated Mandarin audio. A Mandarin voice must be installed; available voice quality and accent vary.
Hear 妈 in a Chinese story
晚上，林雨在北京一条胡同里跑。妈妈在医院，她要给爸爸打电话，可是手机没电了。公用电话旁有三枚硬币。她刚拿起一枚，老人说：“等一下。这三枚硬币是一个小男孩的。他没有手机，他姐姐每天晚上给他打电话。”
Original Inklingo story narration. Listen to the full opening paragraph; connected speech may change the sound.
Vowel-initial syllables
b syllables
p syllables
m syllables
f syllables
d syllables
t syllables
n syllables
l syllables
g syllables
k syllables
h syllables
j syllables
q syllables
x syllables
zh syllables
ch syllables
sh syllables
r syllables
z syllables
c syllables
s syllables
y syllables
w syllables
408 common written syllables grouped by initial. Y and w are spelling conventions, shown as groups for easy lookup. Rare interjections and dialectal syllables are outside this chart.
Make sense of what you’re practicing
Initials, finals and tones
A Mandarin syllable has a final, often preceded by an initial consonant, and a tone. In mā, m is the initial and a is the final. Some syllables begin with a vowel. The chart groups written syllables by their opening letters; not every initial-final combination exists.
Four tones, plus neutral tone
The first tone stays high; the second rises; the third is low and may rise in isolation; the fourth falls sharply. The neutral tone is short and depends on context. Not every syllable occurs as an everyday word in every tone; unavailable example readings are explicitly marked.
Why do ju, qu and xu have no dots?
After j, q and x, written u represents the ü vowel. The same convention applies to yu. With n and l, keep the dots to distinguish nu from nü and lu from lü. The spellings iu and ui are shortened forms inside a syllable.
Listen to Mandarin, then real speech
The chart plays Chinese example characters using a specifically selected Mandarin device voice. It never sends Latin Pinyin to an English voice. Where a matching opening paragraph is available, you can hear the character in existing Inklingo narration. Story audio reflects connected speech rather than isolated chart pronunciation.