<p>I wrote a program to search through an <em>unofficial</em> online version of 现代汉语词典. The results show 1345 possible combinations. </p>

<p><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UrwkxWZMISUDy493deipSxzJsqDCtiik" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Here</a> is a list of the 1345 sounds, each with one example Chinese character (not most representative or most frequently used).</p>

<p>Note that I also included the neutral tone (for example ba0:吧) and a few strange ones (e.g. hm:噷, hng:哼, m1:姆, m2:呣).</p>

<p>Using the above list, you can easily find some "missing" combinations, e.g. an2, ang3, ban2, bang2, bei2, ben2, bian2, biao2, bin2, bin3, bing2, ca2, ca4, cang3, cang4, ce1, ce2, ce3, ...</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-02T07:08:20.723Z
could you post the program as well?
user5389726598465
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-03T03:31:22.827Z
Some dictionaries (e.g. perapera add-on, chineseetymology.org, pleco app) give the sound mǔ for 姆 (though pleco app also gives `m`).
Rodrigo
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-03T03:33:28.747Z
@user5389726598465 You could at least upvote him for his effort, before asking for the program.
Rodrigo
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-03T04:36:45.907Z
@Rodrigo You are right 姆 is almost always pronounced as  `mu3`. The other pronunciation listed is `m1` instead of `m` (updated my answer), and is a special pronunciation used in some dialects.
user12075
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-02T04:52:41.887Z
2018-09-03T04:54:51.147Z
2018-09-03T04:54:51.147Z
user12075
<p>I use this one. But it show all combinations, including ones that aren't words.
<a href="http://www.quickmandarin.com/chinesepinyintable/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.quickmandarin.com/chinesepinyintable/</a></p>

<p>ETA: It has tones, if you want to hear how they sound.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-01T23:52:12.730Z
2018-09-03T08:12:27.567Z
2018-09-03T08:12:27.567Z
user20347
<p>The list of the 1345 sounds was helpful. I used it to create a conversion program. 
I just want to point out that it includes some erroneous entries:<br>
qianwa13 瓩<br>
yingmu13 <br>
kekao31 1<br>
u2 h<br>
uan2 H<br>
uan4 h<br>
uang2 h<br>
ui1 h  </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-28T18:56:15.220Z
There do be some characters with strange readings, like 瓩 (qian1wa3), 兛 (qian1ke4). But most of them are not used anymore nowadays. When counting _sounds_, they should be splitted into two yet.
tsh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-29T20:09:43.040Z
瓩 (qian1wa3), 兛 (qian1ke4)
I had not come across these characters before. Fascinating - as if the Chinese language were not complex enough, we have characters which are abbreviations of two characters. It is one thing to do that informally. If formalized, it would constitute a completely new paradigm (as opposed to the one character - one syllable paradigm).
onetime
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-29T21:14:21.723Z
I am not Chinese. My college-educated Chinese friends tell me that they have never seen 瓩 or 兛 (kilogram) used, and one was a physics major at Beida. He says this is a borrowing from Japanese, where such innovations are not unusual, but it is not standard Chinese.
onetime
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-28T17:24:34.953Z
2020-02-28T17:24:34.953Z
onetime
<p>The following *nix command will get all the pinyin sounds from the CCCedict dictionary:</p>
<pre><code>sed 's/#.*$//;/^$/d'  cedict_1_0_ts_utf-8_mdbg_20220301_011354.txt | cut -d &quot;[&quot; -f2 | cut -d &quot;]&quot; -f1 | tr &quot; &quot; &quot;\n&quot; | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | grep -e '[12345]' | grep -e '[aeiouv]' | sort | uniq -c | sort -bgr
</code></pre>
<p>It:</p>
<ul>
<li>extracts all the strings in the &quot;pinyin&quot; column</li>
<li>puts all the different syllables onto a single line for each</li>
<li>puts everything to lower case</li>
<li>removes everything that doesn't have a tone marking (neutral tones should have &quot;5&quot;)</li>
<li>removes everything that doesn't have a vowel</li>
<li>counts and orders by most frequent</li>
</ul>
<p>There are a few strange cases with &quot;u:&quot;, namely lu:e4 and nu:e4, but that only appears twice in the results.</p>
<p>There are 1535 unique results on the date this is posted. We might think of this as a lower bound, at least for what the Cedict people think is possible.  ~1500 is a LOT more than ~1300 though, so I'm not sure what is going on here. I notice a few like:</p>
<pre><code>覅 覅 [fiao4] /contraction of 勿要/must not/please don't/
</code></pre>
<p>Which I guess are non-standard or dialectical.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-03-01T03:25:39.473Z
2022-03-01T04:57:07.320Z
2022-03-01T04:57:07.320Z
AntonOfTheWoods
<p>I heard that there are roughly 400 sounds in Mandarin plus four tones. Are all combinations of those used in Chinese vocabulary, making it 1600 possibilities per single-sound word? If not, how many such combinations are actually used in any piece of a word?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-31T19:35:44.763Z
possible sounds w/o tones: https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-pinyin-chart.php looking at dictionaries which are arranged 1st alphabetically and 2nd according to tones it is easy to find  syllables which do not have all four tones, e.g.现代汉语词典（１９８３）１５８１p。has no cong3,4, hun3, que3,reng3,4, ru1
user6065
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-01T00:35:08.417Z
use software to extract all syllables which have at least one missing tone from 小马词典, this should cover at least all 6,763 GB2312 characters
user6065
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-03T03:24:00.610Z
@user6065 Why does your first link has the ending `i` three times?
Rodrigo
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-03T05:46:52.913Z
apparently justified by different pronunciation of "vowel" following initial consonants, c,z,s and ch,zh,sh,r
user6065
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-24T14:29:16.667Z
See also: [What are the most common Mandarin words for each pinyin syllable?](https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/40102/what-are-the-most-common-mandarin-words-for-each-pinyin-syllable)
Becky 李蓓
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-03-01T08:48:52.187Z
Nobody else seems to have mentioned 儿化音 érhuàyīn which from a phonological perspective adds another set of distinct sounds eg 门儿 ménr，会儿 huìr/huǐr，脸盘儿 liǎnpánr. This is also related to questions of dialect/regional variations; erhuayin is very present in Beijing (北京话).
goPlayerJuggler
<vocabulary><tones>
Where can I find a full list of combinations of sounds and tones used in Chinese?
# Where can I find a full list of combinations of sounds and tones used in Chinese?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-08-31)

I heard that there are roughly 400 sounds in Mandarin plus four tones. Are all combinations of those used in Chinese vocabulary, making it 1600 possibilities per single-sound word? If not, how many such combinations are actually used in any piece of a word?

**Tags:** vocabulary, tones

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: possible sounds w/o tones: https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-pinyin-chart.php looking at dictionaries which are arranged 1st alphabetically and 2nd according to tones it is easy to find  syllables which do not have all four tones, e.g.现代汉语词典（１９８３）１５８１p。has no cong3,4, hun3, que3,reng3,4, ru1  
> **username_1**: use software to extract all syllables which have at least one missing tone from 小马词典, this should cover at least all 6,763 GB2312 characters  
> **username_2**: @username_1 Why does your first link has the ending `i` three times?  
> **username_1**: apparently justified by different pronunciation of "vowel" following initial consonants, c,z,s and ch,zh,sh,r  
> **username_3**: See also: [What are the most common Mandarin words for each pinyin syllable?](https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/40102/what-are-the-most-common-mandarin-words-for-each-pinyin-syllable)  
> **username_4**: Nobody else seems to have mentioned 儿化音 érhuàyīn which from a phonological perspective adds another set of distinct sounds eg 门儿 ménr，会儿 huìr/huǐr，脸盘儿 liǎnpánr. This is also related to questions of dialect/regional variations; erhuayin is very present in Beijing (北京话).  

---

## 4 answers

### Answer by username_5 on 2018-09-02. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

I wrote a program to search through an *unofficial* online version of 现代汉语词典. The results show 1345 possible combinations.

[Here](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UrwkxWZMISUDy493deipSxzJsqDCtiik) is a list of the 1345 sounds, each with one example Chinese character (not most representative or most frequently used).

Note that I also included the neutral tone (for example ba0:吧) and a few strange ones (e.g. hm:噷, hng:哼, m1:姆, m2:呣).

Using the above list, you can easily find some "missing" combinations, e.g. an2, ang3, ban2, bang2, bei2, ben2, bian2, biao2, bin2, bin3, bing2, ca2, ca4, cang3, cang4, ce1, ce2, ce3, ...

> **Comments:**
> **username_6**: could you post the program as well?  
> **username_2**: Some dictionaries (e.g. perapera add-on, chineseetymology.org, pleco app) give the sound mǔ for 姆 (though pleco app also gives `m`).  
> **username_2**: @username_6 You could at least upvote him for his effort, before asking for the program.  
> **username_5**: @username_2 You are right 姆 is almost always pronounced as  `mu3`. The other pronunciation listed is `m1` instead of `m` (updated my answer), and is a special pronunciation used in some dialects.  

---

### Answer by username_7 on 2018-09-01. Score: 2

I use this one. But it show all combinations, including ones that aren't words.
<http://www.quickmandarin.com/chinesepinyintable/>

ETA: It has tones, if you want to hear how they sound.


---

### Answer by username_8 on 2020-02-28. Score: 1

The list of the 1345 sounds was helpful. I used it to create a conversion program.
I just want to point out that it includes some erroneous entries:  
qianwa13 瓩  
yingmu13   
kekao31 1  
u2 h  
uan2 H  
uan4 h  
uang2 h  
ui1 h

> **Comments:**
> **username_9**: There do be some characters with strange readings, like 瓩 (qian1wa3), 兛 (qian1ke4). But most of them are not used anymore nowadays. When counting _sounds_, they should be splitted into two yet.  
> **username_8**: 瓩 (qian1wa3), 兛 (qian1ke4) I had not come across these characters before. Fascinating - as if the Chinese language were not complex enough, we have characters which are abbreviations of two characters. It is one thing to do that informally. If formalized, it would constitute a completely new paradigm (as opposed to the one character - one syllable paradigm).  
> **username_8**: I am not Chinese. My college-educated Chinese friends tell me that they have never seen 瓩 or 兛 (kilogram) used, and one was a physics major at Beida. He says this is a borrowing from Japanese, where such innovations are not unusual, but it is not standard Chinese.  

---

### Answer by username_10 on 2022-03-01. Score: 1

The following \*nix command will get all the pinyin sounds from the CCCedict dictionary:

```
sed 's/#.*$//;/^$/d'  cedict_1_0_ts_utf-8_mdbg_20220301_011354.txt | cut -d "[" -f2 | cut -d "]" -f1 | tr " " "\n" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | grep -e '[12345]' | grep -e '[aeiouv]' | sort | uniq -c | sort -bgr

```

It:

* extracts all the strings in the "pinyin" column
* puts all the different syllables onto a single line for each
* puts everything to lower case
* removes everything that doesn't have a tone marking (neutral tones should have "5")
* removes everything that doesn't have a vowel
* counts and orders by most frequent

There are a few strange cases with "u:", namely lu:e4 and nu:e4, but that only appears twice in the results.

There are 1535 unique results on the date this is posted. We might think of this as a lower bound, at least for what the Cedict people think is possible. ~1500 is a LOT more than ~1300 though, so I'm not sure what is going on here. I notice a few like:

```
覅 覅 [fiao4] /contraction of 勿要/must not/please don't/

```

Which I guess are non-standard or dialectical.


---

