You need about a dozen mahjong words to play comfortably, and half of them are calls you shout when you claim a tile: chow for a run, pung for a triplet, kong for four of a kind, and the declaration that ends the hand. The rest describe the state of your tiles or the way the group counts value.
This glossary is arranged the way the words reach you at a table, from setup to scoring, and flags where the same concept carries a different name in Hong Kong, Japanese and American play.
Words you hear before the first discard
Setup vocabulary is short and almost entirely physical. Learn these four and the opening two minutes of any game make sense.
- Wall, the tile bank. Everything is turned face down, shuffled and built into double-height rows that box in the middle of the table, and every draw comes out of that structure.
- Break, where the wall is opened, set by dice roll so the deal is unpredictable.
- Dead wall — the riichi term for a block of tiles held back from ordinary drawing.
- Flowers and seasons — the eight decorated bonus tiles that come in a 144-tile Chinese set, sitting outside the three suits and the honours.
Words for taking a turn
A turn is short: draw, decide, discard, and let play pass counter-clockwise.
- Draw — taking the next wall tile at the start of your turn.
- Discard — ending your turn by parting with a tile, which lands face up in the open where all three opponents can study it. Discards are public information and the richest source of reading at the table.
- Claim or call — interrupting turn order to take a discard for a set you are building.
- Expose — laying a claimed set face-up on the table where all three opponents can see it.
The four calls, in plain terms
These are the words you say out loud, worth rehearsing before your first game. Say the call clearly before you touch the tile: in most groups the spoken claim is what binds.
| Call | Say it as | What it takes | Who you can take it from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chow | “chow”, Mandarin chi (chee) | A run: 4-5-6 Dots, say, with no mixing of suits | Only from whoever takes their turn just ahead of you |
| Pung | “pung”, Mandarin peng | A triplet — the same tile, three copies | Anyone |
| Kong | “kong”, Mandarin gang | All four copies of one tile | Anyone, or from your own hand |
| The win | “Mahjong!”, Cantonese sik wu, Japanese ron or tsumo | The final tile that completes a legal hand | Anyone, or your own draw |
Honour tiles have no sequences, so a chow is impossible with winds and dragons. If the suits and honours are still fuzzy, our guide to mahjong tiles and their symbols covers all 34 tile types.
Words that describe your hand
This group is spoken less often but thought about constantly. It is the vocabulary of planning rather than announcement.
- Set or meld — any completed group of three or four tiles, exposed or hidden. American players call an exposed one an exposure.
- Eyes or pair — the two matching tiles that sit alongside the sets in a standard hand. Japanese players call it the head, or atama.
- Concealed hand — built entirely from your own draws, with no claimed discards. Harder for opponents to read.
- Ready, one tile from winning. Chinese tables say ting, Japanese tables say tenpai; either way the hand is now dangerous.
- Waiting tiles — the tiles that would complete a ready hand. Counting how many remain unseen is the most useful sum in the game.
Scoring words worth knowing early
Beginners skip scoring vocabulary and regret it, because it is the language the rest of the table uses to talk about what a hand is worth. Each family of rules counts in its own unit, and the units do not convert.
- Faan — the doubling unit of Hong Kong scoring.
- Points — the flat unit of Mahjong Competition Rules, the international tournament standard used by the World Mahjong Organisation and the European Mahjong Association. Tournament play sets a minimum hand value, and the association publishes the full rules.
- Han and fu — the two Japanese measures, roughly pattern value and composition value, combined into the final score.
- Tai — the scoring unit used by Taiwanese and Singaporean players.
- Yaku — the riichi word for a named scoring pattern.
The units are not interchangeable: a hand worth a great deal under one system can be worthless under another. Our comparison of mahjong point-counting systems works them side by side.
Take the published rulebook rather than table memory as the authority on any actual number. The European Mahjong Association publishes the Mahjong Competition Rules in full, the National Mah Jongg League issues its card every year, and Wikipedia keeps a broad overview of scoring in mahjong if you want the shape of the whole landscape before you pick a table.
Same idea, different table
Most confusion between players is dialect, not disagreement. The table lines up identical concepts across the three families you are likely to meet.
| Concept | Chinese and Hong Kong | Japanese riichi | American mah jongg |
|---|---|---|---|
| A run inside one suit | Chow (chi) | Chii | Hands follow the annual printed card |
| A triplet | Pung (peng) | Pon | Pung |
| All four copies of a tile | Kong (gang) | Kan | Kong |
| The completing pair | Eyes, jiang | Atama or janto | Pair |
| One tile from winning | Ting | Tenpai | No fixed term; players simply say they need one tile |
| Winning | Hu, or sik wu at Cantonese tables | Ron on a discard, tsumo on a self-draw | “Mahjong!” |
| Bonus tiles | Flowers and seasons, eight per set | Dora, marked by an indicator tile | Eight jokers, plus eight flowers |
Read the last row as three separate vocabularies rather than three names for one idea. What each of those tiles actually does in play is a rules question, and the answer depends entirely on the rulebook your table has agreed to follow, so ask before the first deal rather than after it.
The American column is a different vocabulary rather than a dialect of the same one, because the hands themselves come from the annual card issued by the National Mah Jongg League, which distributes a new card every year. Players there discuss exposures, jokers and card lines where a Hong Kong table would discuss chows and faan. If the table you are joining plays a Western style, our guide to Western mahjong rules is the better place to start.
Terms that trip people up
Kong means three different things
An exposed kong is claimed from a discard, a concealed kong is declared from four tiles in your hand, and an added kong upgrades a pung you exposed earlier. All three are visible events that tell your opponents something about the hand you are building.
Flowers are not jokers
These are two different tiles from two different traditions, and the words are not interchangeable. The eight flowers and seasons come in a 144-tile Chinese set; jokers come in an American set, which carries flowers as well. What each one is for is a rules question that your table, or the current National Mah Jongg League card, settles.
Ready, ting and tenpai are one state
All three mean a hand one tile from winning. The word changes with the ruleset; the danger does not.
Every table has house rules you will not find in a glossary
Restrictions on when you may claim a win, what counts as a legal hand and how the round ends differ between families of rules, and sometimes between two groups playing the same family. None of that is vocabulary, so no glossary can settle it. Ask your host to run through the house rules before the first deal; regular players expect the question and nobody minds answering it.
What to say, and when
Call etiquette is consistent across variants, and getting it right makes you look experienced fast.
- Speak the call before you reach for the tile, loudly enough for all three opponents.
- Treat a call as binding; reaching for a discard then changing your mind annoys every table.
- Never narrate your hand. “I only need one more” is information you have handed to three opponents.
Learning the vocabulary in one evening
Vocabulary sticks through use rather than memorisation, so build the drill into a real game. Spend the first round naming every action aloud, then appoint one player as caller for the next hand to announce each discard and claim by name.
A full 144-tile set helps, because flowers, seasons and honours appear naturally rather than in theory. Vocabulary gaps cause many of the mistakes new mahjong players make, since a call you do not understand is one you cannot evaluate.
Quick answers on mahjong vocabulary
What do chow, pung and kong actually mean?
Chow is a run of three tiles inside one suit, such as 4-5-6 Bamboo, pung is three copies of the same tile, and kong is all four. Pung and kong can be taken off anyone’s discard, while a chow is limited to the discard of whoever takes their turn just ahead of you.
Do I have to use the Chinese words?
No. English-speaking tables use chow, pung and kong, which are anglicised Cantonese, while Japanese tables use chii, pon and kan. Pick whichever your group uses and stay consistent.
What does it mean when a player says their hand is ready?
They are one tile from a complete hand. Treat any player who signals a ready hand as a live threat and start choosing safer discards.
Which terms should an absolute beginner learn first?
Four calls and two states: chow, pung, kong, the winning declaration, plus ready and discard. Those six carry an entire evening, and scoring vocabulary can wait for your second session.
Put the vocabulary to work
Nobody learns what ting means from a glossary. They learn it the evening someone says it out loud and then takes the exact tile they were sitting on, which requires four people, one full set and a few hours.
We deliver 144-tile Size 40 sets, tables and stools anywhere in Greater Sydney, or you can collect them from Brodie Spark Drive in Wolli Creek; the hire options and rates sit on one page. Book a set and by the second hand nobody at your table will be translating.
Learning on a proper table helps. Rent a complete mahjong set — tiles, table and racks, delivered ready to play across Sydney.
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