Free tool
Pinyin Generator
Turn any Chinese passage into pinyin. Choose tone marks, tone numbers or plain letters, show pinyin above the characters for reading practice, and copy the result in one click.
About this tool
Pinyin is how most learners get from a page of characters to something they can actually say. But converting by hand is slow, and looking characters up one at a time destroys the flow of a sentence — especially with 多音字, the characters that change pronunciation depending on the word they sit in.
This generator converts a whole passage at once and resolves polyphonic characters from context, so 银行 comes out yínháng rather than yínxíng, and 长大 comes out zhǎngdà rather than chángdà.
Punctuation, spaces, numbers and Latin text pass through untouched. A sentence like 「你好，Mary！2026 年见。」 keeps its comma, its name, its digits and its full stop exactly where you put them.
What it does
Context-aware polyphonic characters
The converter reads whole words rather than isolated characters, which is what separates a usable pinyin tool from a character-by-character lookup table.
Three tone styles
Tone marks (nǐ hǎo) for reading and printing, tone numbers (ni3 hao3) for typing and databases, or no tones at all for URLs and file names.
Ruby mode for reading practice
Display pinyin directly above each character in a stacked layout — the format used in graded readers and children's books.
Symbols preserved exactly
Chinese and Latin punctuation, emoji, digits, line breaks and Latin words are copied through verbatim rather than being transliterated or dropped.
Optional initial capitals
Capitalise the first letter of each syllable or each sentence, which is the convention for names and for pinyin used in formal citations.
Runs offline in your browser
The dictionary ships with the page, so conversion is instant and your text never leaves the device.
How to use it
- 1Paste your Chinese textAny length, simplified or traditional, mixed with English if you like.
- 2Pick a tone styleTone marks are best for reading aloud; tone numbers are best when you need plain ASCII.
- 3Choose a layoutPinyin only for a clean transcript, or pinyin above characters when you are building study material.
- 4Copy the resultOne click copies the converted text to your clipboard, ready to paste into notes, flashcards or a document.
What people use it for
- Adding pronunciation to vocabulary lists and Anki decks
- Preparing a script you need to read aloud but cannot yet read fluently
- Romanising Chinese names for forms, passports and academic citations
- Building graded reading material with pinyin above the characters
- Checking your own reading of a passage against a reference
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is the pinyin?
Very accurate for ordinary prose. The converter uses a word-level dictionary, so it disambiguates the vast majority of polyphonic characters correctly. The remaining hard cases are ambiguous even for native readers — 重 in an unfamiliar proper noun, for example — so proofread names and specialist vocabulary.
Are tone sandhi changes applied?
No, and that is deliberate. Pinyin is conventionally written with each character's citation tone, so 你好 is written nǐ hǎo even though the first syllable is pronounced with a rising tone in running speech. Writing the sandhi tone would be non-standard and would make the output harder to compare with a dictionary.
What happens to punctuation and English words?
They are preserved exactly. Only Han characters are converted; commas, brackets, quotation marks, digits, emoji, line breaks and Latin words come through unchanged and in the same positions.
Can it handle traditional characters?
Yes. Traditional text converts just as well as simplified, and the output uses standard Hanyu Pinyin either way.
What is the difference between tone marks and tone numbers?
They carry the same information. Tone marks (mā má mǎ mà) are the standard published form and are easier to read. Tone numbers (ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4) are plain ASCII, so they survive systems that mangle accented characters and are easier to type on a normal keyboard.
Does the neutral tone show a mark?
No. The neutral tone is written with no mark at all — 妈妈 is māma, not māmā. In tone-number mode it is written as 5, following the usual convention.
Guides and further reading
In-depth articles covering the background behind this tool.
Other Chinese tools
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