Pinyin is the official romanisation of Mandarin Chinese. It can be written three ways, and hanzi.ac accepts all three in search.
| Style | Example | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Tone marks | nǐ hǎo | Textbooks, dictionaries |
| Tone numbers | ni3 hao3 | Fast typing, flashcards, data files |
| No tones | nihao | Chinese input methods, casual typing |
Tone numbers
Write the tone as a digit after each syllable: 1 for first tone, 2 second, 3 third, 4 fourth, and 5 (or nothing) for the neutral tone.
- mā → ma1 · má → ma2 · mǎ → ma3 · mà → ma4 · ma → ma5
- 谢谢 → xie4 xie5
Typing ü
The vowel ü appears after n and l: nǚ (woman), lǜ (green). Keyboards rarely have it, so two conventions are used:
- v in place of ü: lv4 = lǜ. This is what Chinese input methods use.
- u: in place of ü: lu:4 = lǜ. This is the convention in CC-CEDICT data.
After j, q, x and y, the dots are never written: ju, qu, xu, yu always stand for ü.
Typing tone marks
- Windows / macOS: add a pinyin input method (for example “Pinyin – Simplified”) and type the Chinese characters, or use an accent-typing tool.
- Phones: on most keyboards, long-press a vowel to choose a toned version.
For searching, typing tone marks is rarely worth the effort: numbers or no tones give the same results.
Searching hanzi.ac with pinyin
All of these find 你好:
nihaoni haoni3hao3nǐhǎo
Without tones you get every word with those syllables, most common first. Adding tone numbers narrows the list: ma lists many words, ma3 lists words read mǎ. You can also search in English (bank) or paste Chinese text; a phrase such as 我想喝咖啡 is split into the words it contains.