What is Pinyin?#

Pinyin is the phonetic system of Chinese language. It is the most widely-used system of writing Mandarin Chinese that uses the Latin alphabet. Most importantly, it’s a great tool to help you learn the accurate pronunciation of Mandarin words and input Chinese characters on your computer or smartphone.

Like English phonetic symbols, Pinyin also uses the modern alphabet to build its system. However, you need to learn how to read Pinyin, as Mandarin contains some sounds that do NOT exist in English phonetic symbols. Have a look at all of our videos, listen to the voices in Real Chinese and our tones to hear how native speakers pronounce the sounds.

Don’t worry if you don’t get it right first time. Learning Pinyin needs a fair bit of practice. As we all know, practice makes perfect.