Chinese alphabet: why there isn't one, and what to learn instead (video)
Chinese has no alphabet; it writes characters. Learners use pinyin instead. See every letter A to Z, Mandarin's 400 syllables, tone marks, zhuyin and typing.
Chapters
- 0:00Start
- 0:17The short answer
- 0:37Characters, not letters
- 1:22Pinyin from A to Z
- 2:37About 400 syllables
- 3:25Tone marks
- 3:48Why characters stay
- 4:33Zhuyin in Taiwan
- 4:54Fake charts and typing
- 5:38What to do next
Transcript
Start
Search for the Chinese alphabet, and you'll find neat A to Z charts of Chinese characters. They're made up. Chinese doesn't have an alphabet at all. From SayMei Guides, by Mei Lin: the Chinese alphabet, why there isn't one, and what to learn instead.
The short answer
The short answer: Chinese is written in characters, and each one is a syllable with a meaning. What learners call the Chinese alphabet is pinyin, the official spelling of Mandarin in Latin letters. It uses 25 of the 26 English letters, plus a U with two dots, and several don't sound the way English reads them.
Characters, not letters
Take 好, good. You can't split it into letters. The whole character is the syllable, and the meaning comes with it. One character, one syllable, one unit of meaning. And there's no fixed set: Unicode lists more than 100,000 characters. So most learners start with pinyin. China's legislature approved it in February 1958, and in 1982 it became the world standard for romanising Chinese. Every syllable has three parts: an initial, the consonant at the start; a final, the rest; and a tone, marked over the main vowel. The scheme lists 21 initials and 35 finals. That small kit is the whole system.
Pinyin from A to Z
How many letters are there? Officially, 26. But we converted 33.5 million words of Chinese film and TV subtitles into pinyin, and the letter V never appeared. It's kept for foreign words and dialects. Instead, pinyin adds a U with two dots, as in 女, woman. Thirteen letters read just like English, and five get you close. Seven read wrong. C sounds like the end of cats: 菜, dish. Q is near the start of cheese: 七, seven. X is near the start of she: 西, west. Z is the end of kids: 在, at. E alone is an uh: 喝, to drink. I is an ee in 你, you, but a buzz in 是, to be. And U is an oo: 路, road. The mix of letters is different, too. We counted every letter in 46.7 million syllables of subtitles. I, N and A make up a third of all pinyin letters, while T, the second most common letter in English, is about seven times rarer. And you'll write Z about 35 times as often as in English.
About 400 syllables
English syllables come in endless shapes, like strengths. Mandarin uses about 400. In the CC-CEDICT dictionary, we found all 403 syllables of our pinyin chart, plus 14 rare extras. Tones turn them into about 1,300, and about a fifth of the possible pairs never occur. And a few dozen do half the talking. The top five were 我, I; 的; 是, to be; 你, you; and 了. Just 33 syllables carry half of everything said on screen. It takes 112 for 80%, and 306 for 99%. So get the common ones right, and most of what you say will be right too.
Tone marks
A syllable without its tone mark is only half spelled. Here's the scheme's own example: 妈, mum. 麻, hemp. 马, horse. 骂, to scold. And the question word 吗, light and short, with no mark at all. You'll also see numbers: one to four for the tones, and five for the neutral tone.
Why characters stay
So why keep the characters? Because one syllable can mean dozens of things. We grouped the 3,088 characters on the new HSK reading lists by syllable. Ignoring tones, a full 47 share the sound of 鸡, chicken, and the average is about eight. On paper, the characters tell them apart at a glance. Characters are built from parts. In 妈, mum, 女, woman, gives the meaning, and 马, horse, is there only for its sound. About half the characters on the HSK 1 to 4 lists are built this way. But the sound part gave the right syllable only about two times in five. So you can't sound out a new character.
Zhuyin in Taiwan
Learners in Taiwan meet zhuyin first, often called bopomofo. It was created in 1913, decades before pinyin, with 37 symbols of its own, and 21 match pinyin's initials one for one. Learn it only if you'll study in Taiwan, read Taiwanese children's books, or take a Taiwan-based course.
Fake charts and typing
Now, those A to Z charts. Some pick characters for their sound, some for their looks. We made our own small chart to show it. Spell the word paw with characters that look like P, A and W, and you've written corpse, fly fast, mountain. Fine for a puzzle, terrible for a tattoo. Real names go by sound: Anna becomes 安娜. And typing? You type the pinyin without tones, and your phone offers the characters. Type the letters for hello, and 你好 sits at the top. For the U with two dots, you type a V. In a 2014 iiMedia Research survey, about three in four phone users in China chose pinyin as their main input.
What to do next
Where does SayMei fit? Our pinyin chart has all 403 syllables with audio, and our graded stories show pinyin over the characters. Lessons with Mei Lin are spoken, so you say pinyin out loud. They teach mainland Mandarin, not zhuyin or Traditional characters, and not handwriting. What to do next? Learn the seven letters that read wrong. Learn tone marks with the letters. Say the most common syllables out loud. Set up a pinyin keyboard. And start meeting characters early, because pinyin is a bridge. You can practise speaking with Mei Lin, SayMei's teacher, in a short spoken lesson at your level. The full guide, with every source, is on the page at saymei dot app.