Welcome to China Institute's online Chinese pronunciation guide!
This guide is designed to allow you to search Chinese syllables written in both pinyin and Wade-Giles spellings, the two most predominant systems of romanization for Chinese characters used in English language documents. Wade-Giles, so-called after the two developers, is an older system sometimes used in Western academic and popular publications. Pinyin, developed and implemented in the People's Republic of China in the 1950's, is today the more widely used system. An author or editor's choice to use one system over the other is often a matter of personal preference, ideological bent, or simple convention.
Using the horizontal scroll bar below, simply search for the first letter of the syllable you are looking up: the results will be displayed alphabetically, with pinyin in black and Wade-Giles spellings in red. Note that the same syllable in Chinese will be given with different spellings in the two systems. For example, the city "Xi'an" in pinyin would be written "Hsi-An" in Wade-Giles. You can search "x" for the "xi" spelling in "Xi'an," and "h" for the "hsi" spelling in "Hsi-An;" please note that both spellings indicate the exact same syllable and character in the original Chinese.
Make sure your computer speakers are enabled as the guide requires audio playback, and allow for the page to load completely before engaging the guide. Please note this guide does not include specific tonal pronunciations for Chinese words, and only gives pronunciations for single syllables. To search for "Xi'an," you will need to look up "xi" first and "an" second -- "xian" without the apostrophe is another word entirely. A hyphen or apostrophe separates distinct syllables, and all syllables will end either in "n," "ng," or a vowel.
