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@LarsAndren well bopomofo has its advantages for -ui and -iu, which are spelt -uei and -iou in it, and for ü being a totally different letter from u. However, marking tone 1 with nothing and tone 0 with a dot is something I don't like. Also, the -ian combination is spelt that way, but is pronounced /jen/. And I guess spelling song as sueng and qiong as qüeng is not that much an advantage or a clear spelling. So for people who already know the Latin alphabet, I'd definitely recommend Pinyin, whereas for those who don't, well, each has its pros and cons :). –  MickG Sep 19 '14 at 20:44

6 Answers 6



English pinyin
 Lee     li
 she     shi    (the two consonants are also different)
 see     si





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Actually @Alemanno that depends on whether you view that -i as a vowel /ɨ/, and then you're right, or as a trailing syllabic consonant, and then with z c s you have syllabic /z/, and with zh ch sh r you have syllabic /ʐ/. That, of course, depends on whether the speaker is or isn't able to distinguish z c s from zh ch sh. –  MickG Sep 15 '14 at 19:35
Pronouncing and and listening to myself, I can hear a difference in the -i's. But I guess in speech I would not be too good at distinguishing them if the vowel (i.e. the syllabic / vocalic use of the different consonants) were the only difference. But then, for completeness, I feel it is opportune to report this :). –  MickG Sep 15 '14 at 19:37


There are lots more YouTube videos about pinyin sounds.

There's also a good chart at pinyin.com with all the changes described. This table at quickmandarin.com will play the sounds for you if you click on one of them. It covers the tones as well.

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Note than when you bring up English "sure" that it's a word with very different sounds in American English versus British or Australian English, and that many readers won't be aware of this. Also YouTube links are not usable in China at this time due to the Great Firewall )-: –  hippietrail Nov 5 '13 at 12:06
+1, The pinyin.info chart is by far the best source of all the answers, but it is still missing certain things. –  Ming Jun 18 '14 at 1:16



I like to think that the inventors of pinyin wanted to save some trouble, and decided to spare the writers of pinyin the hassle (and ink) of writing the umlaut above the 'U', when it is not absolutely necessary. (It does pose a challenge for learners though).

Some pinyin charts can help you remember it by visualization. On the chart below you'll see the 'Ü' pronunciation is grouped regardless of how it is written ('Ü' or not)

Standard Mandarin pinyin chart

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My mothertongue teacher suggested the following "Pinyin false friends list". She spoke about the "7+3+5" false friends:

  1. The 7 are z c s zh ch sh r, after which i is pronounced, she said, as "silence"; this, as I said in a comment, equates to either always /ɨ/ or, more accurately, a trailing syllabic voiced fricative, i.e. zi ci si zhi chi shi ri = /tsz̩ tsʰz̩ sz̩ tʂʐ̩ tʂʰʐ̩ ʂʐ̩ ɻʐ̩/, or one may say ri = /ʐʐ̩/, that varies from speaker to speaker;
  2. The 3 are j q x, after which u is pronounced like ü in any case; that is because j q x are alveolo-palatal, and are thus never used before non-palatal sounds like u; that also explains why z c s zh ch sh r have the above sounds with -i: i is palatal, they are not; in fact, what used to be */tsi/ etc. "collapsed" into modern ji etc., and so did *gi etc, according to Wikipedia; this is why Peking is Beijing: it used to be *Beiging and got Wade-Giles Pei-king, and lost the i for "English phonetic representation";
  3. The 5 are ui iu ian üan o, which are pronounced as uei iou ien üen we respectively.

Now I do not agree to the o. Or rather, it needs specifications. o by itself is, AFAIK, only present in the 4 characters 哦喔噢嚄, which are interjections and exclamative particles, and which I would pronounce /o/ – I'm not a native though, so this must be taken cum grano salis, and they are sometimes rendered as /wo/. When o is a syllable final (e.g. bo po mo fo, actually those are the only examples, as elsewhere you find uo) it is usually pronounced /wo/. Wikipedia has this table and note three in this one agreeing with this view. Also, this Wiktionary entry, for example, translates -o to /-u̯o/, which is essentially /-wo/. With this, I think the 7+3+5 rule is a good mnemonic for these spelling-sound discrepancies.

See also here for further reading and comparisons with other Romanizations such as Wade-Giles.

There is also another thing: tone sandhi (Chinese 连续变调). Basically, third tones often change. Base rule: 3+3 -> 2+3, i.e. nǐhǎo is pronounced níhǎo. For sequences, see here and linked questions. There are also tone variations of and , which are sometimes marked, but often not marked. For those, if you are not satisfied with this, I suggest you ask another question.

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Even if the pronunce is "ü", the pinyin is always "u" after: "j" "q" "x".

There's a (cruel!) mnemonic doggerel for this rule:

小淘气 (xiǎo táoqì) "the little brats" 见了鱼眼 (jiàn le yǔyǎn) "saw the eyes of a fish" 就挖去 (jiù wā qù) "and took them out"

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