<p>An idea coming from <a href="https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/40728008" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> suggests to take the HSK vocabulary list annotated with pinyin and put the words list to Google translate. The post's author found 11% of words incorrectly converted for HSK level 1-3 words.</p>
<p>The issue is that the <a href="http://www.chinesetest.cn/godownload.do" rel="nofollow noreferrer">official HSK website</a> provides only a words-list without pinyin in an excel format. However, you can find respectively <a href="https://marcopolomandarin.com/hsk-vocabulary-with-pinyin/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> and <a href="https://hsk.academy/en/hsk_1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> words-lists annotated with pinyin in a pdf or on a website which you can later programmatically convert in a suitable format.</p>
<p><strong>EDIT</strong>, in comments:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://hskhsk.com/word-lists" rel="nofollow noreferrer">HSK wordlist with pinyin in tab-separated values</a></li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-25T16:51:33.007Z
great idea about HSK! pdf is a tricky format to extract the text from as it often mangles the characters and spacing, but this is definitely a useful direction to investigate; [this](https://hskhsk.com/word-lists) looks to be in a more accessible format
ccpizza
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-25T17:00:52.387Z
Nice! Seems like you found the right resource.
Firmin Martin
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-26T10:24:46.643Z
@FirminMartin: took the HSK word list and validated it against a couple of popular pinyin-conversion libraries, specifically _pinyin4j_ (java) and _pypinyin_ (python) and out of the 5000 hsk words around over 300 were wrong (mostly the tones). That would be below 10 percent. That's considering that both conversion libraries are using maps for both character _and_ phrases. Even using the `large_pinyin.txt` map from [pypinyin](https://github.com/mozillazg/phrase-pinyin-data/tree/06cdaaf520393c41bbeb6085a953fed09665c2aa) (~9MB) did not significantly improve the error rate.
ccpizza
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-25T16:22:51.213Z
2020-07-26T01:09:40.743Z
2020-07-26T01:09:40.743Z
Firmin Martin
<p>Where to find an authoritative and/or verified list of examples for correct (and incorrect) Chinese to Pinyin conversions for words and sentences?</p>
<p>I am specifically looking for corner cases when automated Chinese (simplified/traditional) conversion to pinyin might fail so that I can build a test case to verify correctness.</p>
<p>For example, the character <code>呢</code> could be translated to pinyin as any of <code>ne5</code>,<code>ni2</code>,<code>na4</code>, or <code>ne4</code> and it looks like some libraries are getting it wrong in certain contexts.</p>

<pinyin><software>
Examples of correct and incorrect pinyin
# Examples of correct and incorrect pinyin

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-07-25)

Where to find an authoritative and/or verified list of examples for correct (and incorrect) Chinese to Pinyin conversions for words and sentences?

I am specifically looking for corner cases when automated Chinese (simplified/traditional) conversion to pinyin might fail so that I can build a test case to verify correctness.

For example, the character `呢` could be translated to pinyin as any of `ne5`,`ni2`,`na4`, or `ne4` and it looks like some libraries are getting it wrong in certain contexts.

**Tags:** pinyin, software


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2020-07-25. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

An idea coming from [here](https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/40728008) suggests to take the HSK vocabulary list annotated with pinyin and put the words list to Google translate. The post's author found 11% of words incorrectly converted for HSK level 1-3 words.

The issue is that the [official HSK website](http://www.chinesetest.cn/godownload.do) provides only a words-list without pinyin in an excel format. However, you can find respectively [here](https://marcopolomandarin.com/hsk-vocabulary-with-pinyin/) and [here](https://hsk.academy/en/hsk_1) words-lists annotated with pinyin in a pdf or on a website which you can later programmatically convert in a suitable format.

**EDIT**, in comments:

* [HSK wordlist with pinyin in tab-separated values](https://hskhsk.com/word-lists)

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: great idea about HSK! pdf is a tricky format to extract the text from as it often mangles the characters and spacing, but this is definitely a useful direction to investigate; [this](https://hskhsk.com/word-lists) looks to be in a more accessible format  
> **username_1**: Nice! Seems like you found the right resource.  
> **username_0**: @username_1: took the HSK word list and validated it against a couple of popular pinyin-conversion libraries, specifically _pinyin4j_ (java) and _pypinyin_ (python) and out of the 5000 hsk words around over 300 were wrong (mostly the tones). That would be below 10 percent. That's considering that both conversion libraries are using maps for both character _and_ phrases. Even using the `large_pinyin.txt` map from [pypinyin](https://github.com/mozillazg/phrase-pinyin-data/tree/06cdaaf520393c41bbeb6085a953fed09665c2aa) (~9MB) did not significantly improve the error rate.  

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