Chinese Typing Test
Sixty seconds. You get the pinyin and the meaning — type the characters with your own input method. Scored in characters per minute.
In hanzi mode you see the pinyin and the meaning and type the characters — the same thing you do when you write a message in Chinese. In pinyin mode you see the characters and type the toneless pinyin, which is what you would type into the input method anyway, so it needs nothing installed. Press Esc to skip a word.
Words you skipped
How to type Chinese, if you cannot yet
Typing Chinese does not need a Chinese keyboard. You type the pinyin on the keyboard
you already own and an input method converts it: type
nihao and pick 你好 from the list that appears. Every desktop and phone
has one built in, it just needs turning on —
the full guide is here, with the
steps for Windows, macOS, iPhone, Android and Linux.
Until then, use pinyin mode above. It asks for exactly what you would type into the input method, so the practice carries straight over.
What the score means
Characters per minute counts Chinese characters produced, not keystrokes — 你好 is two characters however many letters it took to get there. Both modes are scored the same way, so the number means the same thing whichever way you typed it.
Only hanzi mode goes on the leaderboard. The two modes take different numbers of keystrokes per character, so a single board holding both would put the easier one on top and tell you nothing. For most learners the limit is not typing speed at all — it is how quickly the word comes to mind, which is why the words you skip are listed for you to save.