Hanzi → Cantonese Jyutping (粤拼) converter. The Hong Kong Linguistic Society standard (LSHK, 1993). 6 tones with optional IPA transcription.
Cantonese Jyutping Converter (粤拼)
How to use
Enter Chinese text
Simplified or traditional, single characters or full sentences — e.g. 香港 or 我爱广东话.
Pick output mode
Space-separated (best for reading), per-character table, or IPA transcription.
Convert
Instant Jyutping output. The 6 Cantonese tones are marked as digits 1-6 after each syllable.
Study side-by-side
Use table mode to learn each character's Jyutping + tone individually.
Jyutping: Hong Kong\'s Modern Cantonese Romanisation Standard
Jyutping (粤拼, pronounced jyut6 ping3) is the Cantonese romanisation system promulgated by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. Its key innovation was using pure ASCII letters with numeric tone marks (1-6), with no diacritics. This made Jyutping computer-friendly and easy to type, allowing it to rapidly become the academic and IT standard.
Jyutping vs. earlier Cantonese romanisations
Cantonese has been romanised for centuries — but never standardised. Yale (1970s, popular in US academia), Sidney Lau (British missionary tradition), and 教院 (Hong Kong government legacy standard) each retain their adherents. But since the 1990s, Jyutping has won out on three counts: computer-friendliness, tone clarity, and academic recognition. Hong Kong language textbooks, Cantonese Wikipedia, and Google Translate all default to Jyutping.
The 6 Cantonese tones
Modern Cantonese has 6 tones (down from the historical 9 — the three "checked" tones are no longer independent). Jyutping marks them with digits 1-6: 1 high-level, 2 high-rising, 3 mid-level, 4 low-falling, 5 low-rising, 6 low-level. Mastering tones is the core listening challenge for Cantonese learners — significantly harder than Mandarin\'s 4 tones because the contrasts (especially between tones 3, 5, 6) are subtler.
Who uses Jyutping?
(1) Cantonese learners: the textbook standard. (2) HK cultural researchers: academic citation format. (3) Overseas Chinese (especially North American HK-diaspora children): using romanisation to learn the spoken form of their heritage language. (4) Language technology engineers: speech input, TTS, ASR models annotate Cantonese data in Jyutping. (5) SG/MY Cantonese-heritage diaspora: many KL/Penang Chinese have Cantonese ancestry but only know Mandarin or English — Jyutping provides a systematic path to relearning the dialect.
This tool is built on the open-source to-jyutping library (BSD-2-Clause). The underlying character-to-Jyutping dictionary draws from Hong Kong academic sources (CUHK and others).
10 Facts about Jyutping
Jyutping was published in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, but took ~20 years to dominate — broad civilian adoption came only in the 2010s.
Cantonese has 6 tones in modern Jyutping. The traditional count of 9 — including 3 "checked" tones — is historical; the checked tones are actually variants of tones 1, 3, and 6 ending in -p, -t, -k.
"Hong Kong" in Jyutping is hoeng1 gong2 — tone 1 (high level) on 香, tone 2 (high rising) on 港. This is why "Hong Kong" has its distinctive lifting cadence.
Jyutping uses "j" for the y-sound (jat1 = 一), "z" for the j-sound (zou6 = 做), and "c" for the ch-sound (caa4 = 茶). These are its most counterintuitive spelling choices for English speakers.
Jyutping distinguishes long vs. short vowels: aa vs a. Subtle to the ear but completely changes meaning — e.g. 三 (saam1, three) vs 杉 (caam3, fir tree) have different vowel lengths.
Jyutping input methods are now among the most popular Chinese input methods in Hong Kong, alongside Cangjie and Sucheng. Smart Jyutping (with word-level prediction) has overtaken Cangjie in user share.
Cantonese is a major dialect of Malaysian Chinese in Kuala Lumpur and Perak (especially in family and social settings). Many KL Chinese can speak Cantonese but never learned Jyutping — picking it up systematises their tone control.
Cantonese Wikipedia (the 粤语版 wiki) uses Jyutping as its romanisation standard for article titles. This was a major step in Jyutping's acceptance as the "semi-official" web standard.
Jyutping does not work for Mandarin — it's designed specifically for Cantonese. Mandarin uses Hanyu Pinyin with a different tone system. See RT-CHN-022 (Hanzi → Pinyin) for Mandarin.
Pairs with RT-CHN-035 (Cantonese Yale) and RT-CHN-036 (Mandarin Tone Drill) — the three-tool "Chinese-language tonal pronunciation" set.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No. Both are Chinese romanisation systems, but for different languages. Hanyu Pinyin is for Mandarin (4 tones). Jyutping is for Cantonese (6 tones). The letter choices, tone marking, and syllable structure are all different.
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Two reasons: (1) German and Nordic languages (which the Jyutping designers drew on) use "j" for the y-sound. (2) Deliberately avoiding overlap with Mandarin Pinyin (where "j" = ch-sound, as in jiang). Keeping the two systems' letter assignments different prevents learner confusion.
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There's an unmarked Jyutping variant (tones dropped) used for casual writing — e.g. Hong Kong place names like "Hung Hom" (紅磡, properly hung4 hom3) are essentially unmarked Jyutping. For learning, however, you should always use tonal Jyutping.
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Yes — macOS, iOS, Windows, and Android all support smart Jyutping IMEs with 210,000+ word dictionaries and contextual prediction. RIME, ABC, and Yale are popular implementations.
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No. HK primary schools don't teach Jyutping formally — local Cantonese speakers learn characters directly and pick up tones aurally. Jyutping is used mainly by academics, non-native learners, and language professionals.
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No. This tool covers standard HK/Guangzhou Cantonese only. Taishanese, Siyi, and Hakka are adjacent dialects with different sound systems and need dedicated tools.
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Yes — Cantonese-specific characters (啲 di1, 咁 gam3, 嘅 ge3, 咗 zo2) are all in the to-jyutping dictionary. This is a strength of Jyutping — it covers the full Cantonese vocabulary, not just shared-with-Mandarin characters.
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to-jyutping picks the most common reading. E.g. 行 can be hang4 (to walk) or hong4 (bank, profession). The tool defaults to highest-frequency reading. Complex polyphones still need manual verification.
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IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is the universal linguistic notation describing actual pronunciation (ŋ, ɔ, etc.). Jyutping is an "application-layer" notation — easier to type but requires learning Jyutping letter conventions. Academic linguistics uses IPA; everyday Cantonese learning uses Jyutping.
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to-jyutping open-source library (BSD-2-Clause), with dictionary data drawn from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and other academic Cantonese resources.
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