Chinese Example Sentences
2,169 Chinese sentences with pinyin, English and audio — every one of them written by hand for this site, none of them machine generated. Search by Chinese, by pinyin or by English, or open any of 1,032 word pages to see that word in context. Free, and no sign-up.
Search the sentence bank
What is in the bank
A few of the shortest, one from each source. Press the speaker on any of them.
Where these sentences come from
Every sentence here was written for a page on this site, by a person, with a purpose. That is the difference between this and a corpus scraped out of subtitles or run through machine translation: nothing is approximate, and nothing was invented to fill a gap.
| Source | Sentences | Written to |
|---|---|---|
| Dictionary examples | 1,106 | Show one headword doing its everyday job. |
| Graded readers | 469 | Written strictly to the HSK 1–4 word lists, so they connect. |
| Travel phrasebook | 464 | What you say, and what gets said back to you. |
| Grammar library | 130 | Chosen to show one structure at a time. |
Pinyin is the reading from the same dictionary the translators use, so a sentence here can never disagree with a translation of it.
Common words in a sentence
The most common words that have sentences, in the order a learner meets them. Each one opens a page of every sentence it appears in.
Questions about the sentence bank
Where do these example sentences come from?
All 2,169 of them were written by hand for this site — as dictionary examples, as lines in the graded readers, as travel phrases, or as grammar examples. None is machine translated and none is generated, which is why a word with no sentence says so instead of showing you an invented one.
How do I find a sentence with a particular word?
Type the word in Chinese and every sentence containing it comes back, shortest first. Each word that has sentences also has its own page at /sentences/ plus the word, so you can link to it or come back to it later.
Can I search in English or pinyin?
Yes. English matches the translations, and pinyin is matched without tone marks — "ni hao", "nǐ hǎo" and "nihao" are all the same search.
Is there audio for the sentences?
Yes, on every sentence short enough to speak. Audio plays only when you press the button; nothing is synthesised while the page loads.
Is it free?
Yes — no account, no sign-up and no limit on lookups. The site is supported by ads.
Read more Chinese
A sentence bank shows a word working. A story shows a hundred of them working together.
Graded readers Dictionary index Read your own text aloud