Hanzi → Pinyin converter. 5 formats: tone marks, numeric, plain, initials, Zhuyin. Polyphone-aware via pinyin-pro.
Hanzi → Pinyin Converter (汉字拼音转换)
How to use
Paste Chinese text
Words, sentences, paragraphs all work.
View 5 pinyin formats
Tone marks, numeric, plain, initials, Zhuyin — all displayed.
See polyphones flagged
The tool detects polyphone characters (e.g. 重) and lists all readings.
Copy the format you need
Each row has a Copy button — pick the right format for your context.
Chinese characters to pinyin, and how 一 and 不 change tone
Hanyu Pinyin, published in 1958, writes Mandarin in Latin letters with four tone marks (first, second, third and fourth tones); the neutral tone is left unmarked. This tool looks up readings with the open-source pinyin-pro library and shows five formats at once.
一 and 不: written one way, said another
In speech, 一 and 不 change tone: 一个 is said yí gè and 不对 bú duì. China's national standard for pinyin, GB/T 16159-2012, says to write their own tones (yī gè, bù duì), and dictionaries do; primary textbooks and courses for foreign learners often write the spoken tones instead. This tool writes the standard form by default; tick the option above for the spoken form. The third-tone change (你好 said ní hǎo) is written by no one, and not here either.
Five formats
(1) Tone marks (nǐ hǎo). (2) Numbered tones (ni3 hao3; the neutral tone is 5). (3) No tones (ni hao). (4) Initials (NH). (5) Zhuyin (ㄋㄧˇ ㄏㄠˇ, neutral-tone dot in front), the symbols Taiwan teaches reading with. An r-coloured 儿 is joined to its syllable as the standard writes it (一会儿 yī huìr), but only where the library reads that 儿 as r-colouring.
Characters with more than one reading
Many characters have more than one reading: 重 is zhòng in 重要 (important) and chóng in 重新 (again). The tool picks a reading from context and lists the alternatives below so you can check.
How often 一 and 不 change tone in real text
In 100,000 sentences of Chinese news, about half of all 一 sit directly before a fourth tone, and so do about two in five 不. There 不 is said bú, and 一 is said yí unless it is part of an ordinal or a number, such as 第一 or 十一.
In the same news text, counting dictionary tones, two third tones meet about 2.5 times per 100 syllables, and more than half of all sentences have at least one such pair. Inside words it is rarer: 3.8% of the multi-character words among the 10,000 most frequent, the commonest being 可以.
ISO 7098 adopted Hanyu Pinyin as the international standard for romanising Chinese in 1982, and was revised in 1991 and 2015.
Taiwan teaches reading with Zhuyin; Hong Kong schools teach Putonghua with Hanyu Pinyin.
和 has five readings (hé, hè, huó, huò, hú); 会 has two (huì and kuài).
Middle Chinese had four tone classes, 平上去入. In Mandarin the level tone split in two and the entering tone disappeared, its syllables spread across the other four tones.
ü is written u after j, q and x (ju, qu, xu), because u never occurs there. On a keyboard, v usually stands in for ü (nv for nǚ).
Frequently Asked Questions
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Practically unlimited — but <1000 chars per call recommended for snappy response.
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pinyin-pro picks the most context-appropriate reading. Tool also shows all alternatives for manual verification.
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No.
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No — Mandarin pinyin only. For Cantonese Jyutping see RT-CHN-035.
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Baidu/Google Translate give a single best reading. This tool gives 5 formats + polyphone breakdown — focused on conversion, not translation.
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pinyin-pro typically passes them through (English, numbers, punctuation).
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The standard and dictionaries write 一 and 不 with their own tones. Tick "Write 一 and 不 as spoken" to see the tones as said.
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Tool outputs standard ü (written u after j/q/x). v is a keyboard substitute; academic + dictionary writing uses ü.
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Brand abbreviations, domains, usernames. 中国移动 → ZGYD.
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Only approximate — Classical Chinese tones (平上去入) don't exactly map to modern tones. Classical poetry analysis needs specialised tools.
Pick up where you left off
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