Chinese pronunciation guide: tones, initials and finals
The whole sound system on one page — an interactive pinyin chart you can hear, the four tones drawn as contours, and the three sound changes that trip up every beginner: two third tones in a row, and the moving tones of 不 and 一.
Mandarin has around four hundred distinct syllables, and every one of them is built the same way: an optional initial consonant, a final, and a tone over the whole thing. Once you can hear and produce those three parts, no new sound will surprise you — the rest of the language reuses them.
Initials × finals
The pinyin chart, out loud
Every syllable Mandarin uses. Pick one and hear it in all four tones plus the neutral tone — the fastest way to find the sounds your own language does not have.
The a / o / e series — the vowels you meet first.
Select any syllable in the chart to hear it. Nothing is downloaded until you do.
| Initiale | -a | -o | -e | -ai | -ei | -ao | -ou | -an | -en | -ang | -eng | -ong | -er |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ∅ | — | ||||||||||||
| b | — | — | — | — | |||||||||
| p | — | — | — | ||||||||||
| m | — | — | |||||||||||
| f | — | — | — | — | — | ||||||||
| d | — | — | — | ||||||||||
| t | — | — | — | — | |||||||||
| n | — | — | |||||||||||
| l | — | — | — | ||||||||||
| g | — | — | |||||||||||
| k | — | — | |||||||||||
| h | — | — | |||||||||||
| zh | — | — | |||||||||||
| ch | — | — | — | ||||||||||
| sh | — | — | — | ||||||||||
| r | — | — | — | — | — | ||||||||
| z | — | — | |||||||||||
| c | — | — | — | ||||||||||
| s | — | — | — |
Empty cells are combinations that do not occur. Audio is resolved through the configured speech provider — with the bundled local mock, playback is synthesised rather than recorded by a native speaker.
The pairs to check first
zh/ch/sh against j/q/x, and z/c/s against zh/ch/sh. Most beginner misunderstandings come from these six, not from the tones.
The three that are written oddly
iu is really iou, ui is really uei, and un is really uen. The full vowel comes back when you slow down — which is why liù sounds like “lee-oh”.
The one with no vowel
The i in zhi, chi, shi, ri, zi, ci and si is not the i of ji. It is the buzz of the consonant held on — hold the consonant and add voice.
Courbe du ton
Four tones and a neutral one
Pitch belongs to the word, not to the mood of the speaker. Each contour below is drawn on the same pitch scale, so you can compare shapes rather than memorise descriptions.
First tone1
mā
妈mother
High and flat. One steady note near the top of your comfortable range — the sustained “aaah” a doctor asks for. It does not move at all.
Second tone2
má
麻hemp
Rising. Starts in the middle and climbs, exactly like an English “Huh?” when you did not catch what someone said.
Third tone3
mǎ
马horse
Low. Alone and slow it dips and comes back up, but in ordinary speech it is simply the lowest tone: the voice sinks and stays down. Chasing the full dip is what makes learners sound slow.
Fourth tone4
mà
骂to scold
Falling, sharp and short. It drops from the top to the bottom like a firm “Stop!”
Neutral tone5
ma
吗question particle
No contour of its own. Short, light and unstressed — its pitch is whatever the syllable before it leaves behind.
Tone is never signalled by colour alone anywhere on HSK Guide: the tone number and its contour mark are always present next to the syllable, and every syllable carries a screen-reader description naming its tone.
Sound change 1
When two third tones meet
A third tone immediately before another third tone is said as a second tone. The spelling does not change; the pronunciation does.
In a longer run, only the last third tone survives — everything before it rises. And before any other tone, a third tone drops its rise altogether and simply stays low: that is the version you use most of the time, in 老师 lǎoshī, 你们 nǐmen and 好吃 hǎochī.
Textbooks do not usually write this change, and neither does HSK Guide — nǐ hǎo on the page is ní hǎo in the mouth. Say it the changed way from the first day; un-learning a robotic double dip later is harder than learning it right.
- 你好
- Written
- nǐ hǎo
- Said
- ní hǎo
hello
- 很好
- Written
- hěn hǎo
- Said
- hén hǎo
very good
- 我很好
- Written
- wǒ hěn hǎo
- Said
- wó hén hǎo
I am fine
- 老师
- Written
- lǎoshī
- Said
- lǎoshī — low, no rise
teacher
Sound change 2
不 and 一 rewrite their own tone
These two words change tone depending on what follows them. Unlike the third-tone change, this one is normally written down — so what you read is what you say.
bù
not
不 is fourth tone everywhere except directly before another fourth tone, where it becomes bú.
- 不是bú shìbefore a fourth tone → bú
- 不客气bú kèqibefore a fourth tone → bú
- 不好bù hǎobefore a third tone → bù
- 不来bù láibefore a second tone → bù
yī
one
一 keeps its first tone when you count, at the end of a number and in ordinals. Before a fourth tone it becomes yí; before a first, second or third tone it becomes yì.
- 第一dì-yīordinal → yī
- 一个yí gebefore a fourth tone → yí
- 一天yìtiānbefore a first tone → yì
- 一起yìqǐbefore a third tone → yì
一 also has a neutral-tone use between a repeated verb (看一看 kànyikàn), where it is barely pronounced at all. Conventions for writing these changes differ between textbooks; HSK Guide writes them for 不 and 一.
Apprendre
Work through it properly
The published pronunciation guides go further than this page: exercises, minimal pairs and the practice order that makes the sounds stick.
Les quatre tons et le ton neutre
En mandarin, la hauteur de la voix appartient au mot, pas à l’humeur de celui qui parle. Cette leçon donne la forme des quatre tons et du ton neutre, puis les trois changements que l’on rencontre dès le premier jour : deux troisièmes tons qui se suivent, et les tons mobiles de 不 et 一.
12 min · HSK 1
Initiales et finales : les sons qui vous feront trébucher
Toute syllabe du mandarin est une initiale, une finale et un ton. Cette leçon décrit le système rapidement puis s’attarde là où la difficulté se trouve vraiment : zh ch sh r, j q x, la voyelle ü et c face à s — avec un diagnostic distinct pour les francophones, les anglophones et les arabophones, car les trois groupes échouent de trois façons différentes.
14 min · HSK 1
Les initiales qu’aucune langue européenne ne possède : zh ch sh r et j q x
Le mandarin possède trois séries de sifflantes là où le français n’en a qu’une, et il oppose ses occlusives par le souffle et non par la sonorité. Cette leçon présente les trois rangées comme un seul système, explique pourquoi l’orthographe ne peut jamais être ambiguë, et donne quatre tests physiques à s’appliquer sans professeur.
16 min · Fondations
Les finales qui se brouillent : -n contre -ng, ü contre u, e contre o
Trois distinctions concentrent une large part des malentendus qu’un étranger provoque : les deux finales nasales, les deux voyelles arrondies, et la lettre e isolée. Chacune tient à un muscle dans une position fixe, et chacune se vérifie au miroir. La leçon ouvre aussi les trois finales dont l’orthographe cache une voyelle : iu, ui et un.
15 min · Fondations
Les vingt paires de tons : un entraînement complet
Le mandarin moderne fonctionne par mots de deux syllabes : les tons s’apprennent donc par paires et non un par un. Quatre tons pleins multipliés par cinq secondes possibles — quatre tons plus le neutre — donnent exactement vingt combinaisons. Cette leçon fournit un mot-clé pour chacune, nomme les cinq qui échouent le plus souvent, et propose un protocole en cinq jours qui couvre toute la grille.
18 min · Fondations
La parole enchaînée : tons neutres, 儿化 et sandhi dans les suites longues
Tout ce que vous avez appris sur les syllabes isolées change dès qu’elles s’enchaînent. Un ton neutre n’est pas l’absence de hauteur mais une hauteur transmise par le voisin ; le 儿化 est une couleur ajoutée à une finale, non une syllabe de plus ; et le sandhi du troisième ton suit le sens du groupe, non le nombre de syllabes.
17 min · Fondations
Ce que les arabophones et les francophones ratent, précisément
Un accent étranger n’a rien d’aléatoire. Chaque langue maternelle fournit une liste courte et prévisible de substitutions, et une fois cette liste écrite, on peut la travailler point par point. Cette leçon la dresse pour l’arabe et pour le français, dit ce que chaque langue possède déjà d’utile, et finit par l’erreur commune aux deux : laisser la mélodie de la phrase l’emporter sur le ton du mot.
16 min · Fondations
Changements de ton : ce que la page ne dit pas
Le pinyin imprime le ton qu’une syllabe possède isolément. Dès que les syllabes s’enchaînent, plusieurs de ces tons changent, et deux seulement de ces changements sont notés. Cette leçon rassemble ceux qui comptent maintenant : les troisièmes tons dans les suites de trois et quatre syllabes, les tons mobiles de 不 et 一, et le ton neutre en tant que propriété du mot et non en tant qu’option.
12 min · HSK 2
Questions fréquentes
Do I have to learn tones from the very beginning?
Yes, because a tone is part of the word rather than an accent on top of it. mā, má, mǎ and mà are four unrelated words. Learning a word without its tone means learning it twice.
Why does 你好 sound like ní hǎo?
A third tone immediately before another third tone is pronounced as a second tone. The spelling does not change, only the pronunciation. This is the commonest sound change in Mandarin and it is not optional.
Are the two dots in ü ever dropped?
After j, q, x and y the dots are dropped because those initials never combine with plain u — ju, qu, xu and yu are all ü sounds. After n and l the dots stay, because nu and nü are different syllables.
Is the audio on this page a native speaker?
It depends on the configured provider. Where a native recording exists it is served; otherwise the configured speech provider synthesises the syllable, and the bundled local mock is clearly labelled as a mock.