Chinese Alphabet

This page contains a table including the following: Chinese alphabet through text
(below) and through a video (left side), which contains characters, or you can call
them even letters which help you pronounce the words in a given language, you will
also learn about the different consonants and vowels. For a list of all characters check
our Chinese Characters. Make sure to check our Learn Chinese page, which contains
several lessons that might help you in your learning process.

English Chinese Character Pinyin

A 诶 ēi
B 比 bǐ
C 西 xī
D 迪 dí
E 伊 yī
F 艾弗 ài fú
G 吉 jí
H 艾尺 ài chǐ
I 艾 ài
J 杰 jié
K 开 kāi
L 艾勒 ài lè
M 艾马 ài mǎ
N 艾娜 ài nà
O 哦 ó
P 屁 pì
Q 吉吾 jí wú
R 艾儿 ài ér
S 艾丝 ài sī
T 提 tí
U 伊吾 yī wú
V 维 wéi
W 豆贝尔维 dòu bèi ěr wéi
X 艾克斯 yī kè sī
Y 吾艾 wú ài
Z 贼德 zéi dé
Chinese Phonetics

Pinyin is a Chinese system for transliterating Mandarin Chinese into 25 European

characters (the letter “v” is not included).

In Chinese, each character corresponds to one syllable (which corresponds to a part of

an English word, and entire word or more than one word). Chinese syllables consist of
three elements: initial sound, final sound and tone. The initial sounds are consonants
and the final sounds contain at least one vowel. Some syllables consist only of an
initial sound or a final sound.

Note that "c", "ch", "j", "q", "r", "sh", "x", "z" and "zh" are spelt differently.
In Chinese (Mandarin) there are 21 initial sounds: b, c, ch, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q,
r, s, sh, t, x, z, zh

In Chinese (Mandarin) there are 35 final sounds:

6 simple finals: a, e, i, o, u, ü
13 compound finals: ai, ao, ei, ia, iao, ie, iou, ou, ua, uai, üe, uei, uo
16 nasal finals: 8 front nasals: an, en, ian, in, uan, üan, uen, ün
8 back nasals: ang, eng, iang, ing, iong, ong, uang, ueng

Additional syllables in Mandarin Chinese: 5 special cases: er, hm, hng, ng, ~r
The initial and final sounds make a total of 56 basic sounds. Combinations of initials
and finals plus the special cases result in 411 possible combinations. Applying the
four tones of Mandarin Chinese to this, we get a total of around 1,600 unique
syllables.