<p>Hanyu Pinyin does not have a 1:1 mapping between written symbols (letters) and pronunciation, and so can't be said to be accurate in the sense that IPA (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the International Phonetic Alphabet</a>) is meant to be accurate.</p>
<p>It is of course perfectly functional as a way of writing down Mandarin pronunciation, but only if you know how to pronounce the language first or learn the system properly.</p>
<p>However, you can <em>not</em> rely on letters representing the same sounds, or that the same sounds are written with the same letters! This is particularly true for vowels, while the consonants are more straightforward.</p>
<p>There are cases where many sounds are mapped to one single written symbol. Here are a few examples (<a href="https://www.hackingchinese.com/a-guide-to-pinyin-traps-and-pitfalls/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the examples are from this article</a>, that has both more examples and audio for some of them):</p>
<p>The letter i represents some very different sounds in Mandarin:</p>
<ol>
<li>It’s a front close vowel [i] and occurs in: mi, bi, ti etc.</li>
<li>i represents the empty rhyme following z, c and s (this sound can be described in many ways, but it’s fairly close to English [z], but with more air allowed to pass).</li>
<li>It also represents the sound following zh, ch and sh. This is the same as the previous sound, but pronounced close to the retroflex position (i.e., the tongue is retracted and raised as when producing the zh, ch, sh and r sounds, just not as close).</li>
</ol>
<p>Other examples include many different sounds represented by the letters e and a.See the linked article above for more examples of these.</p>
<p>There are also cases where the opposite is true, i.e. that one sound is written in many different ways.</p>
<p>The example that best shows why you need to already speak the language for the system to make perfect sense is how [y] is treated. It has dots, written ü, when there is ambiguity, as in lü and nü, because we also have lu and nu, which are different sounds (which any native speaker knows intuitively, but beginner students don't). But there are no dots when there's no ambiguity, so even if it's actually pronounced jü, qü and xü, it's spelt ju, qu and xu. Same with jüe (jue) jün (jun), etc.. There is no syllable that start with j and ends with the u in e.g. lu: *[t͡ɕu]</p>
<p>Then we also have sounds that are there but simply left out, such as -ui actually being pronounced -uei (水, 对, 贵) and -iu actually being pronounced -iou (六，休，牛).</p>
<p>As Dan mentioned in a comment, tone changes can also be opaque unless you are familiar with the language. There's no written indication that nǐhǎo is pronounced with a rising tone on the first syllable, or that the third tone is a low tone in front of all other tones except the third tone (e.g. měiguó, xiǎngyào etc.), or that 不 and 一 change tone depending on the following syllable.</p>
<p>So no, Pinyin is not exact in the way you imagine it to be. And if I may ask, if you're working on a guide for how Mandarin is pronounced, wouldn't it make more sense to just use IPA, which is designed specifically to describe how languages are pronounced?</p>
<p>Then you can rely on the works of countless other people who have tried to make similar guides and descriptions, and you can use what you've learnt to learn about pronunciation in other languages too! Maybe start with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Standard Chinese Phonology</a> article on Wikipedia. For reading in English, I also recommend:</p>
<ul>
<li>Lin, Y. H. (2007). The Sounds of Chinese. Cambridge University Press.</li>
<li>Duanmu, S. (2007). The phonology of standard Chinese. Oxford University Press.</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-01T16:43:26.953Z
Do you know where I can find a _free_ long list of IPA pronunciations of Chinese words? _(ideally not Wiktionary, as I have to write a complicated parser for that and I don't know how accurate it is)_
Lance Pollard
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-01T17:17:14.440Z
This tool converts to IPA: https://easypronunciation.com/en/chinese-pinyin-phonetic-transcription-converter. AllSet Learning's chart can be switched to IPA (show settings, then tick the IPA box): https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/pinyin_chart
Olle Linge
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-02T17:18:13.877Z
The advantage with Zhuyin is that you can't cheat. When using Pinyin, you can just guess that "shi" is pronounced like "she" in English, which it absolutely isn't (it's not even close). On the other hand, Pinyin is more convenient, both for typing and for reading. Both systems work very well if you learn them properly. IPA is very useful for pronunciation, but extremely hard to type and almost non-existent in learning resources. I compared Pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA here if you're curious: https://www.hackingchinese.com/learning-to-pronounce-mandarin-with-pinyin-zhuyin-and-ipa-part-1/
Olle Linge
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-01T10:07:30.450Z
2020-12-15T09:52:20.880Z
2020-12-15T09:52:20.880Z
Olle Linge
<p>Pinyin seems to be an EXACT pronunciation guide to Chinese words, but is it exact? I am not a Chinese speaker so don't know for sure. I would like to take the Pinyin transcription of Chinese words and convert it to a pronunciation guide using my own techniques, but I am not sure if I can properly do that because for all I know Pinyin might not accurately match real pronunciations in the real world. Are there cases where Pinyin doesn't accurately reflect the pronunciation of words in Chinese? What are some examples if that is the case? If it does accurately reflect pronunciation, that's great then and that answers the question.</p>
<p>By EXACT I mean, Pinyin at least has a seemingly 1-to-1 mapping of sounds to spellings, but perhaps one spelling might have multiple pronunciations in the real world. I am not talking about dialects really, assume I am talking about some hand-wavy notion of a &quot;standard&quot; pronunciation of a Chinese word. I am talking about one word say &quot;zang&quot; (just making this up) might be pronounced &quot;zayng&quot; but &quot;zhang&quot; might be pronunced &quot;zhung&quot;, so the &quot;-ang&quot; is pronounced &quot;-ay&quot; in one case but &quot;uh&quot; in another, sort of thing.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-15T15:55:30.413Z
@goPlayerJuggler says "*once you understand its (sometimes quite counter-intuitive) rules*".  Ironically (to an outsider at least), those complicating rules were done in the name of *simplification*. E.g. When a "ü" is used where a "u" would be illegal, then omit the umlaut — The sequence "ui" is never legal, so omit the "e" from sequence "uei".
Ray Butterworth
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-11-30T22:54:19.087Z
off the top of my head, the exact pronunciation of the r- initial is controversial, and most of the U's in pinyin are actually Ü's
小奥利奥
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-01T00:40:34.680Z
It's pretty accurate except for Tone Sandhi, where we might change the tone for some words in speech.
dan
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-12-01T10:08:29.793Z
I'm not an expert but I find the -ian ending sounds different for some words. To my ears, for the same speaker "天 (tian1)" may sound more like an "e" vowel whereas in "年 (nian2)" it would sound more like an "a" vowel. It's probably also related to regional variations. But apart from that I fend that pinyin is generally a good, almost completely reliable guide to pronunciation - once you understand its (sometimes quite counter-intuitive) rules.
goPlayerJuggler
<pronunciation><pinyin>
Is pinyin an accurate pronunciation guide?
# Is pinyin an accurate pronunciation guide?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-11-30)

Pinyin seems to be an EXACT pronunciation guide to Chinese words, but is it exact? I am not a Chinese speaker so don't know for sure. I would like to take the Pinyin transcription of Chinese words and convert it to a pronunciation guide using my own techniques, but I am not sure if I can properly do that because for all I know Pinyin might not accurately match real pronunciations in the real world. Are there cases where Pinyin doesn't accurately reflect the pronunciation of words in Chinese? What are some examples if that is the case? If it does accurately reflect pronunciation, that's great then and that answers the question.

By EXACT I mean, Pinyin at least has a seemingly 1-to-1 mapping of sounds to spellings, but perhaps one spelling might have multiple pronunciations in the real world. I am not talking about dialects really, assume I am talking about some hand-wavy notion of a "standard" pronunciation of a Chinese word. I am talking about one word say "zang" (just making this up) might be pronounced "zayng" but "zhang" might be pronunced "zhung", so the "-ang" is pronounced "-ay" in one case but "uh" in another, sort of thing.

**Tags:** pronunciation, pinyin

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: off the top of my head, the exact pronunciation of the r- initial is controversial, and most of the U's in pinyin are actually Ü's  
> **username_3**: It's pretty accurate except for Tone Sandhi, where we might change the tone for some words in speech.  
> **username_4**: I'm not an expert but I find the -ian ending sounds different for some words. To my ears, for the same speaker "天 (tian1)" may sound more like an "e" vowel whereas in "年 (nian2)" it would sound more like an "a" vowel. It's probably also related to regional variations. But apart from that I fend that pinyin is generally a good, almost completely reliable guide to pronunciation - once you understand its (sometimes quite counter-intuitive) rules.  
> **username_1**: @username_4 says "*once you understand its (sometimes quite counter-intuitive) rules*".  Ironically (to an outsider at least), those complicating rules were done in the name of *simplification*. E.g. When a "ü" is used where a "u" would be illegal, then omit the umlaut — The sequence "ui" is never legal, so omit the "e" from sequence "uei".  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_5 on 2020-12-01. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

Hanyu Pinyin does not have a 1:1 mapping between written symbols (letters) and pronunciation, and so can't be said to be accurate in the sense that IPA ([the International Phonetic Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet)) is meant to be accurate.

It is of course perfectly functional as a way of writing down Mandarin pronunciation, but only if you know how to pronounce the language first or learn the system properly.

However, you can *not* rely on letters representing the same sounds, or that the same sounds are written with the same letters! This is particularly true for vowels, while the consonants are more straightforward.

There are cases where many sounds are mapped to one single written symbol. Here are a few examples ([the examples are from this article](https://www.hackingchinese.com/a-guide-to-pinyin-traps-and-pitfalls/), that has both more examples and audio for some of them):

The letter i represents some very different sounds in Mandarin:

1. It’s a front close vowel [i] and occurs in: mi, bi, ti etc.
2. i represents the empty rhyme following z, c and s (this sound can be described in many ways, but it’s fairly close to English [z], but with more air allowed to pass).
3. It also represents the sound following zh, ch and sh. This is the same as the previous sound, but pronounced close to the retroflex position (i.e., the tongue is retracted and raised as when producing the zh, ch, sh and r sounds, just not as close).

Other examples include many different sounds represented by the letters e and a.See the linked article above for more examples of these.

There are also cases where the opposite is true, i.e. that one sound is written in many different ways.

The example that best shows why you need to already speak the language for the system to make perfect sense is how [y] is treated. It has dots, written ü, when there is ambiguity, as in lü and nü, because we also have lu and nu, which are different sounds (which any native speaker knows intuitively, but beginner students don't). But there are no dots when there's no ambiguity, so even if it's actually pronounced jü, qü and xü, it's spelt ju, qu and xu. Same with jüe (jue) jün (jun), etc.. There is no syllable that start with j and ends with the u in e.g. lu: \*[t͡ɕu]

Then we also have sounds that are there but simply left out, such as -ui actually being pronounced -uei (水, 对, 贵) and -iu actually being pronounced -iou (六，休，牛).

As Dan mentioned in a comment, tone changes can also be opaque unless you are familiar with the language. There's no written indication that nǐhǎo is pronounced with a rising tone on the first syllable, or that the third tone is a low tone in front of all other tones except the third tone (e.g. měiguó, xiǎngyào etc.), or that 不 and 一 change tone depending on the following syllable.

So no, Pinyin is not exact in the way you imagine it to be. And if I may ask, if you're working on a guide for how Mandarin is pronounced, wouldn't it make more sense to just use IPA, which is designed specifically to describe how languages are pronounced?

Then you can rely on the works of countless other people who have tried to make similar guides and descriptions, and you can use what you've learnt to learn about pronunciation in other languages too! Maybe start with the [Standard Chinese Phonology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology) article on Wikipedia. For reading in English, I also recommend:

* Lin, Y. H. (2007). The Sounds of Chinese. Cambridge University Press.
* Duanmu, S. (2007). The phonology of standard Chinese. Oxford University Press.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Do you know where I can find a _free_ long list of IPA pronunciations of Chinese words? _(ideally not Wiktionary, as I have to write a complicated parser for that and I don't know how accurate it is)_  
> **username_5**: This tool converts to IPA: https://easypronunciation.com/en/chinese-pinyin-phonetic-transcription-converter. AllSet Learning's chart can be switched to IPA (show settings, then tick the IPA box): https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/pinyin_chart  
> **username_5**: The advantage with Zhuyin is that you can't cheat. When using Pinyin, you can just guess that "shi" is pronounced like "she" in English, which it absolutely isn't (it's not even close). On the other hand, Pinyin is more convenient, both for typing and for reading. Both systems work very well if you learn them properly. IPA is very useful for pronunciation, but extremely hard to type and almost non-existent in learning resources. I compared Pinyin, Zhuyin and IPA here if you're curious: https://www.hackingchinese.com/learning-to-pronounce-mandarin-with-pinyin-zhuyin-and-ipa-part-1/  

---

