Pinyin Annotator

Annotate Chinese text with pinyin above each character. Toggle tone style and HSK coloring before copying the result.

Input

Loading pinyin lib...

Output

HSK colors: blue, green, yellow, orange, red, violet.

Why annotate with pinyin?

Pinyin is far more than training wheels. Teachers rely on it to highlight tone changes, show sandhi, and contrast near-homophones before students graduate to character-only reading. When you annotate your own materials, you reinforce sound-symbol mapping with the exact phrases you plan to use in class, meetings, or family chats.

By layering tone colors or numbers over the exact characters, you create a bridge between what you hear and what you see. That bridge is critical for independently reviewing songs, TV dialogue, or exam passages without waiting for a textbook publisher to release a companion edition.

Workflow tips

Paste short sections (200–400 characters) at a time so that you can proofread the tone marks and spacing. When preparing lyric sheets or pronunciation guides for friends, keep punctuation and emoji—they survive conversion and make the sheet feel natural.

Toggle to tone numbers when collaborating with learners that still rely on numeric IME input. Once everyone is comfortable, switch back to diacritics so the tone contour is visible at a glance. If you teach, print the annotated side-by-side with the plain text so students can cover the hints during drills.

HSK coloring mirrors CEFR difficulty: blue (HSK1) through violet (HSK6).
Turn off coloring when prepping exam essays to keep formatting neutral.
Use the annotation for shadowing practice: trace the tone marks with your finger while speaking aloud.
Keep a master copy in Markdown or Google Docs so you can update phrases without retyping characters.

Quality commitments

Every feature on this page is hand-built: local pinyin rendering, HSK frequency coloring, and the tone toggles. We document pronunciation quirks in context rather than auto-lifting dictionary entries, so each annotation remains a piece of publisher-created study guidance.

Future updates will include zhuyin, sandhi highlights, and export-to-PDF templates. If you need a specific layout (songbook, sermon, or bedtime stories), send a note so we can prioritize that workflow.

Frequently asked questions

Can I paste classical Chinese or mixed scripts?

Yes. Characters outside the modern CJK block fall back to plain text, so the annotator leaves them untouched. For ㄅㄆㄇㄈ or kana, simply disable HSK coloring so formatting stays consistent.

How do I export annotated text?

Select the output area and copy; browsers maintain the ruby markup so you can paste into Google Docs, Notion, or Word. For PDFs, print the page and enable “Background graphics” so the HSK colors survive.