There are 5 tones to Chinese, that act as "accents" and can change the definition and pronunciation of a certain word.
First Tone (1): -
Second Tone (2): /
Third Tone (3): v
Forth Tone (4): \
Fifth Tone (5): Neutral
Tones can, and are often, written as the number next to the pinyin.
E.g; Ma from Mother or Mom has the first tone (-) so we can write it as Ma 1
Initials are what make the first part of the pinyin of Mandarin.
In this table there are 23 characters, however w and y are not 'officially' initials, but instead are called 'half-vowels'.
They are only used when there are no other initials present with the finals: "i", "u" and "ü".
E.g: yi, wu and wü
