Pinyin chart w/ English translation built in?

[Dolly]

I am trying to teach myself Chinese with free online resources, flashcards, even watching children's video's on you tube. (I learned Chinese words for colors in one day with a nifty sing-along video made for kids!)

I am finding that I learn the words faster If I learn all meanings for one word w all four tones at one time. another words, I learn ma1, ma2, ma3 and ma4 as well as question particle ma at one time, its easier to memorize.

My question is, is there a pinyin chart that has english translation built in? Ideally I would like to find a pinyin chart that shows all four tones with audio (just as it is now) but also has English word next to each word/tone. Is there anything like this out there? Thanks in advance for any help! I am eager to expand my vocabulary and be able to build and understand small sentences in Chinese.

[外国赤佬]

Pinyin syllables aren't words...

Yes, there are plenty of monosyllabic words, but still, most of the vocabulary is, of course, polysyllabic.

[jbradfor]

You could certainly pick a character for each pinyin syllable, if that would help you learn. As long as you realize that for almost all syllables, there are multiple characters with that pinyin syllable.

Personally I would doubt it would help, but if it works for you, go for it.

[陳德聰]

What they said.

The number of possible pinyin syllables does not equal the number of words in Chinese.

You probably have learned that mā, má, mǎ, and mà mean mom, hemp, horse, and scold or something like that. But what about words like shì 是 事 室 试 etc. all of which have the same pronunciation and tone but mean completely different things.

This might be a fundamental misunderstanding of how pinyin and Chinese work.

[Dolly]

Thank you all for your replies. It was indeed a fundamental misunderstanding of how pinyin and Chinese work. i clearly have a lot of work ahead of me. I look forward to the journey!