Hanyu pinyin (汉语拼音) spells Mandarin's sounds in Latin letters. Each syllable is an initial, a final and a tone: in mā (妈), m is the initial, a the final, and the line over the a is the first tone.
Below is the whole chart as the official scheme lays it out: the initials, the finals and the four tone marks, then the spelling rules that trip children up.
To hear your child's 听写 words said properly, pick their level below: I'll email you lessons 1 to 3 of it as an Anki deck, free, with audio, pinyin and English on every card.
Your child's homework has pinyin over the characters, and you can't tell mā from mà. So you Google each word one by one just to hear it, then test your child on words you can't say properly yourself.
You're in good company. In the 2020 Census, about 3 in 4 Chinese children aged 5 to 14 in Singapore spoke English most often at home.
I'm Joshua. We speak English at home too, and P1 Chinese was a struggle for my daughter. Below is the full pinyin chart, readable on your phone. The free sample is lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, with audio on every card.
Try the deck free
Pick your child's level and I'll email you lessons 1 to 3 of it as an Anki deck. The full level is SGD 199, all six levels SGD 599, with a 60-day money-back guarantee. More about the deck
Your sample is ready
Your download should start by itself.
Download the sampleI've also emailed it to you, so you can open it on whichever device has Anki.
New to Anki? Step-by-step help for your device:
For new sample takers only
The full deck for SGD 99
SGD 199 SGD 99
15:00
This price is yours for 15 minutes. After that the deck is back to SGD 199.
60-day money-back guarantee.
What's in the sample
- Lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, Standard Chinese, as an Anki deck: 2024 syllabus for P1 to P3, old syllabus for P4 to P6.
- Each full level has Standard and Higher Chinese. P1 to P3 come in both the old and the 2024 syllabus.
- Open it in Anki on your phone, tablet or computer. Anki is free on Android, Mac and Windows.
The initials (声母)
The initial is the consonant a syllable starts with. The scheme lists 21, in these rows. Children learn each one with a vowel after it, as the scheme names them.
| Initials | Said as |
|---|---|
| b p m f | bō pō mō fó (玻 坡 摸 佛) |
| d t n l | dé tè nè lè (得 特 讷 勒) |
| g k h | gē kē hē (哥 科 喝) |
| j q x | jī qī xī (基 欺 希) |
| zh ch sh r | zhī chī shī rì (知 蚩 诗 日) |
| z c s | zī cí sī (资 雌 思) |
Many school charts add y and w to the initials. In the scheme they are how i, u and ü are spelt when nothing comes before them: yi, wu, yu.
The finals (韵母)
The final is the rest of the syllable. The scheme's table has 35. Read each row across: the first column stands alone, the others add i, u or ü in front.
| Alone | With i | With u | With ü |
|---|---|---|---|
| i | u | ü | |
| a | ia | ua | |
| o | uo | ||
| e | ie | üe | |
| ai | uai | ||
| ei | uei | ||
| ao | iao | ||
| ou | iou | ||
| an | ian | uan | üan |
| en | in | uen | ün |
| ang | iang | uang | |
| eng | ing | ueng | |
| ong | iong |
The tones (声调)
Mandarin has four tones and a neutral one. The mark goes over the main vowel of the syllable; the neutral tone has none. The scheme's own example:
| First (阴平) | Second (阳平) | Third (上声) | Fourth (去声) | Neutral (轻声) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ˉ | ˊ | ˇ | ˋ | no mark |
| 妈 mā | 麻 má | 马 mǎ | 骂 mà | 吗 ma |
The spelling rules that trip children up
- ü loses its dots after j, q and x: ju (居), qu (区), xu (虚). After n and l it keeps them, because nu and nü are different sounds: nü (女), lü (吕).
- Three finals shorten after an initial: iou, uei and uen are written iu, ui and un, as in niu (牛), gui (归), lun (论).
- y and w start a syllable with no initial: i becomes yi, u becomes wu, ü becomes yu (and üe, üan, ün become yue, yuan, yun).
- zhi, chi, shi, ri, zi, ci, si are written with an i, but it isn't the i of yi: it is the sound of the initial held on.
- An apostrophe splits syllables when they could run together: pi'ao (皮袄) is pí and ǎo, not piao.
Hear your child's words
A chart gets your child started; the words themselves come from their lessons. Pick a level and a lesson below (or paste this week's 听写 list) to see each word's pinyin and English and hear it said.
A chart won't tell you how this Friday's words sound. Pick your child's level and a lesson below, or paste the 听写 list, and each word comes back with its pinyin and English, and a clip of it said properly.
How Singapore schools use pinyin
MOE's primary Chinese syllabus (2024) asks children to tell syllables, initials, finals and tones apart by ear, to read them clearly and correctly, to read with the help of hanyu pinyin, and to type Chinese with it. Pinyin is a tool for saying and finding words. The 听写 still asks for the characters.
Pinyin is the bridge, not the goal
Pinyin tells your child how a word sounds. It doesn't make the character stick. Every lesson brings a new batch to read, Friday's 听写 tests them once, and without review, words learnt for Friday fade fast.
Spaced repetition fixes the timing: each word comes back right before your child would forget it. In 1885 the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus found that 38 repetitions spread over three days worked as well as 68 crammed into one day.
That's what the deck does, lesson by lesson, 10-15 minutes a day. A Recognition card shows 运动 and asks for yundong and its meaning; a Writing card shows 我爱[yundong]。 and asks for the characters, from the pinyin.
Reading pinyin is the easy part. A child can sound out yundong perfectly and still not know 运动 by sight on Friday, and drilling for Friday only puts the words in short-term memory.
What works is timing. Spaced repetition shows each word right before your child would forget it, so every successful recall pushes the next review further out. Ebbinghaus measured it in 1885: 38 repetitions spread over three days worked as well as 68 crammed into one day.
Within 4 months, my daughter could read and recognise every P1 word. 10-15 minutes a day, no tuition, and the algorithm decided what to review and when.
What's in the deck
- Pinyin, a romanised pronunciation guide, on every card, with English translations, so you always know what the word means.
- Natural Mandarin audio on every card, 13 voices, including a Singaporean one.
- Every word from P1 to P6 for Standard and Higher Chinese, including the new 2024 syllabus: 13,453 flashcards, lesson by lesson.
- Characters your child only needs to read (识读字) get a Recognition card and a Sentence card. Characters they need to write (识写字) also get a Writing card, one character at a time, with stroke order.
- The free sample is lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, Standard Chinese (the 2024 syllabus for P1 to P3, the old one for P4 to P6). A full level is SGD 199 (all six levels SGD 599), with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Sources
- The initials, finals, tone marks and spelling rules (21 initials, 35 finals, the tone example): 汉语拼音方案 (Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet), approved by the National People's Congress in 1958; the official text from China's Ministry of Education, 汉语拼音方案 (PDF attachment).
- What Singapore's syllabus asks of pinyin: MOE, 小学华文课程标准2024 (Primary Chinese Language syllabus 2024, PDF), the listening, speaking, reading and writing goals.
- About 3 in 4 Chinese children aged 5 to 14 speak English most often at home: Department of Statistics Singapore, Census of Population 2020, resident population by language most frequently spoken at home, age group (Chinese).
- 38 repetitions over three days against 68 in one: Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, chapter 8, section 34 (English translation, 1913).
Not sure yet? Start free
Tap your child's level and I'll email you lessons 1 to 3 of it as an Anki deck, free, right now.