Chinese Initials and Finals: How to Pronounce Them and Spell Chinese Pinyin

You’ve probably realized what difficulties you are facing, as you learned that Chinese is a tonal and logographic language.😤 Relax, we are not going to cover the sound and the script at the same time... This post introduces the sound system: initials and finals, the building blocks of every syllable you’ll ever say. Nail these, and you unlock clearer pronunciation, better listening, and real confidence. So let’s break it down, minus the confusing jargon.

What are initials and finals, and are they important for learning Chinese?

Here’s something I’ve learned from being a native speaker: people overcomplicate this. Let’s keep it straightforward.

Every single Chinese syllable (what you see as one character in pinyin) is built from two parts: an initial and a final.

Today, we’re focusing on the sounds themselves — the initials and finals. The upside? It’s a finite system. Once you learn the sets, you can mix and match. The downside? Not every combo works, and some sounds don’t exist in English. But that’s why we’re here.

Chinese pinyin initials

There are 23 initials in Standard Mandarin. Instead of listing them alphabetically, I group them by “family” based on how your mouth makes the sound. This is the trick to pronouncing them correctly — thinking about the physical feeling, not just the English letter.

b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h

Let’s start with the straightforward ones, the sounds that have easy English buddies: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h. But there’s a catch you must hear: the aspiration.

j, q, x

Then we have the groups that trip up nearly every English speaker. The truth is, this is where you earn your stripes.

First, the j, q, x family. Forget everything you know about these letters. They are not the English “j,” “ch,” and “sh.” For j, try saying “tee” but press the middle of your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth. It’s an unaspirated, crisp sound. Q is the same tongue position but with that strong puff of air — it sounds close to “chee” in “cheese” but sharper. X is like “she” but with a wide smile—tongue flat, not curled.

zh, ch, sh, r

Next, the retroflex sounds: zh, ch, sh, r. These require you to curl the tip of your tongue back towards the roof of your mouth (the “hard palate”). Zh is like the “j” in “job” but with that curl. Ch is like “ch” in “chop” with a curl and more puff. Sh is like “sh” in “shoe” with a curl. R is subtle—it’s not the growling English “r.” It’s closer to the “s” in “pleasure” but with that curled tongue. It takes practice.

z, c, s, y, w

The buzzing set: z, c, s. These are dental, meaning your tongue tip should be near your upper teeth. Z is like the “zoo” — a buzzy, unaspirated sound. C is the same placement but with a strong, aspirated “ts” sound like in “cats.” S is, thankfully, just like English “s.”

Finally, y and w feature the same sound as y and w in English consonants. You can practice pronouncing y as the y in "yeast", and w as the w in "woo".

Chinese pinyin finals

If initials are the launch, finals are the journey in Mandarin Chinese. They’re the vowel (and sometimes nasal) core of the syllable. There are about 24 finals, but they build logically from just six simple vowels.

a, o, e, i, u, ü

Let’s meet the core six: a (as in “father”), o (like “loyal”), e (a tricky one—like “uh” in “her” but tighter), i (as in “see”), u (as in “food”), and ü (the unicorn—say “ee” but round your lips tightly, like the French “tu”).

Everything else is a variation or combination of these.

ai, ei, ui, ao, ou, iu, ie, üe, er

For examples, you have compound finals, where two or three vowels glide together. Think ai (like “eye”), ei (like the “ay” in “say”), ao (like “ow” in “cow”), and ou (like “o” in “go”), iu (like "ou" in "you"), ie (like "Ye" in "Yemen"), üe (there is no English equivalent, but you can pronounce it like 约 ), and er (similar to the English -er but with a more curly tongue movement).

an, en, in, un, ün, ang, eng, ing, ong

Then, there are the nasal finals. These are non-negotiable for sounding accurate. You have front nasals ending in -n, where your tongue tip ends up on your upper gums — an, en, in, un, ün. And you have back nasals ending in -ng, where the back of your tongue rises to your soft palate — ang, eng, ing, ong.

Some initials and finals combine into whole syllables

The rule of whole syllables involves the special i, y, and w. After the retroflex group (zh, ch, sh, r) and the buzzing group (z, c, s), the “i” is not the bright “ee” sound. It’s a different, gruntier vowel. After zh, ch, sh, r, it sounds like the “-i” in the word “irk.” After z, c, s, it’s like the buzzy “-i” in “bits.”

For y, when it combines with i, u, e, ue, uan, in, un, ing, the combination needs to be pronounced together because the pronunciation of y blends with the start of the sound of the vowels. The same logic applies to w with u. You can simply follow the whole syllable section of the pinyin chart listed at the beginning of this article to practice!

How to practice the pinyin initial and final with tones

We should address the elephant in the room: reading about sounds is useless without listening and repeating. So here’s a three-step method that actually works.

If you are ready to learn finals and initials more immersively

If you’re further along and already consuming Chinese media, you might consider a tool like Migaku (which my team helps build). Its strength is letting you mine sentences and audio directly from Netflix or YouTube videos. You’d use it to find endless real examples of, say, the “zh” initial in action. The upside is incredible, immersive practice. The honest downside? It’s a power-user tool — probably overkill and not worth the cost if you’re still mastering the basic finals. Here is now you can generate subtitles with pinyin and English translations:

FAQs

So, is there any Spelling Bee Competition in China?

At this point, you may have realized that, unlike English, Chinese characters are not spelled directly from pinyin. Then, how to play Spelling Bee in Chinese? In recent years, mainland China has been holding a contest called (Chinese Characters Dictation Competition), where participants need to write down the characters they heard. If you are curious about Chinese pinyin and the history of Chinese characters, this is the perfect media resource for you!

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