Chinese is written with thousands of logographic characters, but you can type all of them using pinyin — the official romanization of Mandarin. This is exactly how Chinese speakers type on phones and computers.
How pinyin input works
Every Chinese character has a pinyin syllable. You type the syllable with English letters and choose the character from candidates. For example:
- ni → 你 (you)
- hao → 好 (good) — type "ni hao" for 你好 (hello)
- xie xie → 谢谢 (thank you)
- zhong guo → 中国 (China)
- wo ai ni → 我爱你 (I love you)
The four tones
Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone, and pinyin marks them with accents: mā (high), má (rising), mǎ (falling-rising), mà (falling), ma (neutral). Tones are not written in normal typing, so a pinyin like "ma" can mean 妈 (mother), 麻 (hemp), 马 (horse) or 骂 (scold) — the candidates bar lets you pick the right one.
Why is there more than one character per pinyin?
Mandarin has only about 400 syllables but several thousand common characters, so most syllables map to several characters. 是, 时, 十, 事 and 师 are all "shi". The candidate bar sorts them by frequency, and you choose with a click or the number keys.
Start typing Chinese
Open the Chinese pinyin keyboard, type ni, press 1 or Space to pick 你, then type hao and pick 好. You have just written 你好. Try typing Chinese online now.