Free tool · With audio
Chinese alphabet
Chinese has no alphabet. It writes its sounds in pinyin: 23 starting sounds and 24 endings. Tap one to hear it.
Starting sounds
Endings
Four tones
First characters
Does Chinese have an alphabet?
No. Chinese is written in characters, each one a syllable with a meaning. To write how words sound, mainland China uses pinyin, which spells Mandarin with English letters and has been taught in schools since 1958.
How many letters are in the Chinese alphabet?
Pinyin uses 25 of the 26 English letters, plus ü (v stands in for ü when you type). Spoken Mandarin has 23 starting sounds and 24 basic endings, which combine into about 400 syllables, each said in up to four tones.
How do you say the English letters in Chinese?
Mostly the English way, with a Chinese accent. Letters turn up in everyday words, like 卡拉OK (karaoke), T恤 (T-shirt) and B超 (an ultrasound scan).
What should I learn after pinyin?
The characters you will meet most. Chinese schoolbooks start with simple pictures like 人 person, 口 mouth, 日 sun and 山 mountain, then build words from them. Tap any character above to see it written stroke by stroke.
More free tools
Sounds from our own word recordings, the same as the pinyin chart’s; the characters are from the 2025 HSK word list.