Jyutping and Pinyin Explained: Romanisation for Finding and Typing Characters
How the Cantonese Jyutping and Mandarin Pinyin systems spell sounds, how tones are marked, and how to use them to find a character when you don’t know its Cangjie code.
Key takeaways
- Jyutping (粵拼) is the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong’s romanisation for Cantonese. It marks tones with numbers 1–6: 學 is hok6.
- Hanyu Pinyin (漢語拼音) is the standard romanisation for Mandarin, with four tones plus a neutral tone: 學 is xué.
- If you can say a character but can’t decompose it, find it by sound on our Jyutping or Pinyin index, then learn its Cangjie code.
Jyutping: Cantonese in the Latin alphabet
Jyutping was published by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong in 1993. A syllable is an initial, a final and a tone number:
- Initials include b p m f d t n l g k ng h gw kw w z c s j. Note that j is the “y” sound (日 jat6) and z/c are like “dz/ts”.
- Finals include vowels like aa, a, e, i, o, u, oe, eo, yu, with endings m n ng p t k i u.
- Tones are numbered 1–6: 1 high level, 2 high rising, 3 mid level, 4 low falling, 5 low rising, 6 low level.
Example: 香港 is hoeng1 gong2, 中文 is zung1 man4.
Pinyin: Mandarin in the Latin alphabet
Hanyu Pinyin was adopted in mainland China in 1958 and is the international standard for Mandarin.
- Tones are marked with accents or numbers: mā (1) má (2) mǎ (3) mà (4) and the unmarked neutral tone.
- Letters that surprise English speakers: q is like “ch”, x like “sh”, zh like “j”, and ü is written v on keyboards.
Example: 學習 is xuéxí, 中文 is zhōngwén.
Finding a character by sound
When you know how a character sounds but not how it is built:
- Open the Jyutping index or Pinyin index.
- Choose the syllable. Jyutping pages are split by tone, while Pinyin pages combine all tones.
- Find your character in the list. Its Cangjie code is shown next to it, and its page explains the decomposition.
Every character page on this site also lists both readings, so you can learn the pronunciation of a character you typed by shape.
Related guides
Cangjie vs other input methods
An honest comparison of the main ways to type Chinese: shape-based Cangjie and Quick, sound-based Pinyin, Zhuyin and Jyutping, and handwriting and voice.
How to use a Chinese dictionary
Five ways to find a character in a Chinese dictionary: by radical, by stroke count, by pronunciation, by four-corner code and by Cangjie code or handwriting online.
What is Cangjie?
How the shape-based Cangjie system turns any Chinese character into a code of up to five letters, and why Hong Kong typists still swear by it.
Most common characters
The most frequent Traditional Chinese characters in order, with Cangjie and Quick codes, and how many characters you actually need to read everyday Chinese.