Putonghua gives the same final, -an, to level-tone characters from seven 平水韵 rhyme groups, and such splits are common: of 17,207 pairs of level-tone characters with an identical Putonghua final, only 8,702, or 50.6%, sit in the same 平水韵 group by our count. 平水韵 is the 106-group classical system used for regulated verse. Two modern schemes now sit beside it: 中华新韵, 14 groups of Putonghua finals published in the 中华诗词学会's journal in 2004, and 中华通韵, issued for trial use by mainland China's Ministry of Education and State Language Commission and in force from 1 November 2019.
The count covers 942 characters. Each is on the 1980 GB 2312 level-1 list of 3,755 common characters, sits in a single 平水韵 group, has one Putonghua reading, and was level-tone then and still reads in the first or second tone now. The groups come from the Wikisource transcription of 平水韻, edition unstated, with three transcription errors corrected against the 重修廣韻; every figure here is computed on that corrected table. Readings are mainland Putonghua, from the pinyin-pro library.
Mandarin ears hear -an across seven classical groups
The 61 characters in the set that read -an fall into 十四寒 (21), 十三覃 (18), 十五刪 (8), 十三元 (5), 十五咸 (4), 一先 (3) and 十四鹽 (2). Three of those, 覃, 鹽 and 咸, are the old -m groups, which Putonghua now pronounces like -n. Characters read -ian spread over five groups, led by 一先 with 33. Those read -i go to 四支 (33), 八齊 (15) and 五微 (6).
The looser 中华新韵 groups put -an, -ian, -uan and -üan together. On that test, two level-tone characters in the same modern group share a 平水韵 group 34.6% of the time.
Putonghua catches most level-tone pairs and about half the entering ones
Start instead from pairs already in one 平水韵 group, in a wider pool of 2,304 characters from all four tones. Pairs from a level-tone group still share a 中华新韵 group 79.8% of the time. Rising-tone groups hold 67.7% of their pairs, departing groups 61.7% and entering groups 49.6%. Level tones survive best. Several departing groups hold together completely; 入聲六月 keeps 24% of its pairs, and 上平四支, the largest group at 396 characters, 34%.
The entering tone has a second problem. Of the 356 entering-tone characters in the pool, Putonghua reads 176, or 49.4%, in the first or second tone, so they also sound level. Our guide to the upper and lower lines of a spring couplet covers that trap.
Modern readers mistake a 13th-century merger for Tang practice
The preface to 《切韵》 by 陆法言 is dated to the first year of 仁寿 in the Sui dynasty, AD 601. It was not the first rhyme book: the preface names six earlier rhyme books, 吕静's 《韵集》 among them, that it set out to correct. The 106 groups came more than six centuries later, from two 13th-century books. 刘渊's, now lost, had 107 groups. 王文郁's 《平水新刊韵略》 had 106, and the Palace Museum's entry for 平水韵 calls that the system later in general use. The Wikisource transcription dates Wang's book to 1229, and an article on the CASS site to 1227.
Pages that rank for these searches still say Tang and Song poets divided level and oblique by 平水韵. 杜甫 and 李白 wrote centuries before either book. The 106 groups merged rhymes that the 切韵 tradition already allowed poets to use together.
Poets using the newer schemes listen for Putonghua finals alone
中华新韵 sorts characters by Putonghua final into 14 groups. It was published in issue 5 of 《中华诗词》 in 2004, according to an article by 杜肇昆 on the CASS literature institute's site, whose finals table this guide uses. The same article describes 十三辙, a folk scheme, as the one Beijing opera and northern 曲艺 mostly rhyme by.
中华通韵 was developed by the 中华诗词学会. The ministry's announcement says it will not replace the old rhyme books and that the two run side by side, 「知古倡今、双轨并行」. 钟振振, an adviser to the society, sets out its rule in an essay on the society's site: groups follow Hanyu Pinyin finals strictly, and sounds that are merely close are never merged. In the same essay he limits 平水韵 to regulated verse (近体诗), leaving out older-style poems and ci. We did not read the standard's own group table, so none is given here.
Contest organisers set their own rules, which 钟振振 says is their right. A May 2026 notice on the society's site, for a contest run by 怀化市环境卫生工作协会, accepts either system: 「平水韵、中华通韵均可，但不得混用」, either one, but never both in one poem.
Our rhyme table misheard every poem it cited
Until 2 October 2026, our Chinese rhyme dictionary attached seven well-known poems to rhyme groups, and none was the group the poem rhymes in. It filed 杜甫's 《登高》 under 十一真, though its rhyme words 哀, 回, 來, 臺 and 杯 are all in 十灰. 柳宗元's 《江雪》, which rhymes on 絕, 滅 and 雪 in the entering-tone group 九屑, went under the level group 一先. The tool held 25 of the 106 groups with 4–14 sample characters each, put 7 of 221 sample characters in the wrong group, and returned a classical group for 220 of the 3,259 common characters in the transcription, 6.8%. Its history credited the 106 groups to the wrong book.
It now loads all 106 groups from the corrected table: 先 added to 一先, 啼 to 八齊, and 頹 moved from 入聲一屋 to 十灰. It lists every group a character is in, in full, checks whether several rhyme words share one, computes the 中华新韵 group from the pinyin final, and warns when Mandarin reads an entering-tone character in the first or second tone.
Cantonese still picks out the entering tone by its stop endings
Cantonese keeps the -p, -t and -k endings that defined the entering tone. Taking the to-jyutping library's first reading of each traditional form, 352 of the 356 entering-tone characters in the pool end in a stop. The four that do not are 帥, 秸, 摸 and 眨. Five spot checks against the Chinese University of Hong Kong's 粵語審音配詞字庫 agreed with it.
Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary, the 重編國語辭典修訂本, reads some entering-tone characters differently from the mainland. 息 is xí there and xī on the mainland, both level. 夕 is xì against xī, and 寂 is jí against jì, so the same character can sound level to one reader and oblique to another. These come from a handful of look-ups, so we give no count.
A lyric by Su Shi sounds seamless across three classical groups
蘇軾 (Su Shi) wrote 《水調歌頭》 at mid-autumn in 1076, by the Wikisource text's own preface. Its rhyme words, 天, 年, 寒, 間, 眠, 圓, 全 and 娟, all read in the first or second tone in Putonghua and end in -an, -ian or -üan, so they share the 中华新韵 寒 group. In the 平水韵 table they come from three groups: six from 一先, 寒 from 十四寒 and 間 from 十五刪. The poem is a ci, which by 钟振振's account 平水韵 was never meant to govern, and it draws its rhymes from more than one group as ci commonly do. It was also written about a century and a half before 王文郁's 106 groups existed.
