<p>I took the <a href="http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=cc-cedict" rel="nofollow noreferrer">CEDICT</a> file and wrote a script on it. The file has <em>113k dictionary entries</em>, so it covers a very large portion of the Chinese vocabulary.</p>
<p>There are <strong>1522 different pinyin syllables</strong> in CEDICT, when you <strong>distinguish tone numbers</strong> (like, ma1, ma2, ma3, ma4, ma).</p>
<p>If you do <strong>not care about tone</strong> numbers, you'll get <strong>413 syllables</strong> (ma, mo, mi, etc.)</p>
<p>These results include <a href="http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&amp;wdrst=0&amp;wdqb=p%3Am" rel="nofollow noreferrer">m2 and m4</a> (呒, 呣 [interjections]).</p>
<p>UPDATE: Of course, you can argue whether 'ging' and 'fiao' are Mandarin pinyin syllables or not, but they are in the CEDICT file and my answered is based on that.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-09T14:20:10.430Z
Syllables such as fiao and ging are simply not Mandarin. I wonder where CEDICT got these?
wpt
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-09T14:30:43.947Z
@wpt 覅 fiào is a contraction of 勿 and 要, so this is colloquial. Ging has no character, it is a Minnan loanword, in zhuyin fuhao it is ㄍㄧㄥ  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%84%8D%E3%84%A7%E3%84%A5 "ㄍㄧㄥ" returns more than 300k results on Google, almost exclusively used by Taiwanese.
imrek
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-09T16:57:35.870Z
Thanks, should have downloaded cedict first. 覅 is a Wu dialect word acc. to 教育部異體字字典. Not a contraction of 勿 and 要 in Mandarin, M. has no f- in 勿.
wpt
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-10T22:52:02.883Z
Where do you guys get all this info? Wish I could use the Internet like that! Nonetheless, all praise for the Drunken Master! A master work. I'll try to contact Frau Barai and tell her。 Could you send me that script? I'm running Ubuntu 14.04. I'd love to see it!
Pedroski
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-11T06:55:09.407Z
Sorry, I have accidentally already thrown out the script, if you can wait until today evening, I'll try to rewrite and post it a link to it. You will need to run Python. I'm going to write you some instructions, if you have no experience with it.
imrek
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-11T15:58:43.010Z
@Pedroski I have rewrote the script and uploaded to pastie: http://pastie.org/10344191 Here's how you can run it 1) create folder on your system and 2) copy the full script from pastie into a new text file (use gedit on Ubuntu) and save it as pinyincount.py (the extension is important). 3) Download the CEDICT file from here http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/export/cedict/cedict_1_0_ts_utf-8_mdbg.txt.gz 4) Extract it to the same folder as the script. 5) Open a terminal window, and navigate with 'cd' to the folder in which the script and the cedict file is. Run with python pinyincount.py
imrek
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-11T16:01:23.360Z
@Pedroski The script will also output the pinyin syllables alphabetically sorted (with and without tonemarks) to two separate files in the same directory.
imrek
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-13T14:15:16.657Z
I read somewhere 479 possibilities.  But I presume there are some initial/final combinations that never occur.
伟思礼
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-01-18T08:11:12.970Z
Did your script reject entries like "xx5" or where the pinyin column contains ASCII characters or some other non-Chinese item?  I did a similar operation, rejecting those oddballs, and got only 1229.  Of course, there could be bugs in my method, but when I did a web search to check myself, this question was the second hit, and the first was someone saying the number is "about 1200."  (I DID include the "neutral" tone)
伟思礼
CC BY-SA 4.0
2015-08-09T06:57:19.073Z
2022-08-02T10:26:34.047Z
2022-08-02T10:26:34.047Z
imrek
<p>As Maroon points out in a comment, you have to say which dialect you are asking about.  This answer is for Standard Chinese, aka Mandarin.</p>

<p>It also depends on what sort of stuff you include. Counting the distinct lines in the syllable index of the Pinyin Chinese-English Dictionary, I get 420 "lines" but this includes some very marginal stuff such as tei, kei, den, etc. This does <strong>not</strong> include any of the rhotacized syllables, where a suffix -er merges with the syllables and produces many distinctive syllables.  </p>

<p>Most important, however, this figure ignores the four lexical tones of Mandarin, which is definitely not the right; tones are distinctive in Mandarin, so syllables with different tones are different syllables.  The distribution of tones and syllables is skewed, however; not every syllable has all four tones.  A rough approximation is about 1200 distinct syllables.  Again, there will be many marginal cases.  </p>

<p>All this does not use any sort of phonemic analysis which could perhaps reduce the number of syllables, depending on what phonological theories or notation you adopt.</p>

<p>So Chinese is not so syllable poor as you might expect.  Japanese and Hawaiian, for example, have far fewer distinct syllables than Mandarin.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-08-09T06:07:43.103Z
2015-08-09T06:07:43.103Z
wpt
<p>I'm just reading a book about China and Chinese customs from Heike Barai. She says that Chinese only has around 300 different syllables, whereas modern German has about 10 000 and I suppose English is about the same.</p>

<p>Does Chinese really only have 300 syllables? </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-09-17T19:54:02.727Z
With complicated syllables like "twelfth", English has about 16k
Rivenfall
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-08-10T11:51:40.723Z
See also the question [How languages compare with the number of different syllables from all words?](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/36906/how-languages-compare-with-the-number-of-different-syllables-from-all-words)
Puco4
<mandarin><phonology>
How many syllables does Chinese have?
# How many syllables does Chinese have?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-08-09)

I'm just reading a book about China and Chinese customs from Heike Barai. She says that Chinese only has around 300 different syllables, whereas modern German has about 10 000 and I suppose English is about the same.

Does Chinese really only have 300 syllables?

**Tags:** mandarin, phonology

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: With complicated syllables like "twelfth", English has about 16k  
> **username_2**: See also the question [How languages compare with the number of different syllables from all words?](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/36906/how-languages-compare-with-the-number-of-different-syllables-from-all-words)  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2015-08-09. Score: 22

I took the [CEDICT](http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=cc-cedict) file and wrote a script on it. The file has *113k dictionary entries*, so it covers a very large portion of the Chinese vocabulary.

There are **1522 different pinyin syllables** in CEDICT, when you **distinguish tone numbers** (like, ma1, ma2, ma3, ma4, ma).

If you do **not care about tone** numbers, you'll get **413 syllables** (ma, mo, mi, etc.)

These results include [m2 and m4](http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=p%3Am) (呒, 呣 [interjections]).

UPDATE: Of course, you can argue whether 'ging' and 'fiao' are Mandarin pinyin syllables or not, but they are in the CEDICT file and my answered is based on that.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: Syllables such as fiao and ging are simply not Mandarin. I wonder where CEDICT got these?  
> **username_3**: @username_4 覅 fiào is a contraction of 勿 and 要, so this is colloquial. Ging has no character, it is a Minnan loanword, in zhuyin fuhao it is ㄍㄧㄥ  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%84%8D%E3%84%A7%E3%84%A5 "ㄍㄧㄥ" returns more than 300k results on Google, almost exclusively used by Taiwanese.  
> **username_4**: Thanks, should have downloaded cedict first. 覅 is a Wu dialect word acc. to 教育部異體字字典. Not a contraction of 勿 and 要 in Mandarin, M. has no f- in 勿.  
> **username_0**: Where do you guys get all this info? Wish I could use the Internet like that! Nonetheless, all praise for the Drunken Master! A master work. I'll try to contact Frau Barai and tell her。 Could you send me that script? I'm running Ubuntu 14.04. I'd love to see it!  
> **username_3**: Sorry, I have accidentally already thrown out the script, if you can wait until today evening, I'll try to rewrite and post it a link to it. You will need to run Python. I'm going to write you some instructions, if you have no experience with it.  
> **username_3**: @username_0 I have rewrote the script and uploaded to pastie: http://pastie.org/10344191 Here's how you can run it 1) create folder on your system and 2) copy the full script from pastie into a new text file (use gedit on Ubuntu) and save it as pinyincount.py (the extension is important). 3) Download the CEDICT file from here http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/export/cedict/cedict_1_0_ts_utf-8_mdbg.txt.gz 4) Extract it to the same folder as the script. 5) Open a terminal window, and navigate with 'cd' to the folder in which the script and the cedict file is. Run with python pinyincount.py  
> **username_3**: @username_0 The script will also output the pinyin syllables alphabetically sorted (with and without tonemarks) to two separate files in the same directory.  
> **username_5**: I read somewhere 479 possibilities.  But I presume there are some initial/final combinations that never occur.  
> **username_5**: Did your script reject entries like "xx5" or where the pinyin column contains ASCII characters or some other non-Chinese item?  I did a similar operation, rejecting those oddballs, and got only 1229.  Of course, there could be bugs in my method, but when I did a web search to check myself, this question was the second hit, and the first was someone saying the number is "about 1200."  (I DID include the "neutral" tone)  

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### Answer by username_4 on 2015-08-09. Score: 12

As Maroon points out in a comment, you have to say which dialect you are asking about. This answer is for Standard Chinese, aka Mandarin.

It also depends on what sort of stuff you include. Counting the distinct lines in the syllable index of the Pinyin Chinese-English Dictionary, I get 420 "lines" but this includes some very marginal stuff such as tei, kei, den, etc. This does **not** include any of the rhotacized syllables, where a suffix -er merges with the syllables and produces many distinctive syllables.

Most important, however, this figure ignores the four lexical tones of Mandarin, which is definitely not the right; tones are distinctive in Mandarin, so syllables with different tones are different syllables. The distribution of tones and syllables is skewed, however; not every syllable has all four tones. A rough approximation is about 1200 distinct syllables. Again, there will be many marginal cases.

All this does not use any sort of phonemic analysis which could perhaps reduce the number of syllables, depending on what phonological theories or notation you adopt.

So Chinese is not so syllable poor as you might expect. Japanese and Hawaiian, for example, have far fewer distinct syllables than Mandarin.


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