import re regex = re.compile(r'\b[a-z]*[āáǎàōóǒòêēéěèīíǐìūúǔùǖǘǚǜüńňǹɑɡ]+[a-z]*\b') text = "Thǐs ís à pìnyin abóut shá" m = regex.findall(text) print(m)

Matching results:
['ís', 'à', 'pìnyin', 'abóut', 'shá']
The first Thǐs is not matched because the default pinyin is all lowercase, excluding uppercase.

Do you want to match all legal pinyin?

If so, you can find the pinyin index of a dictionary and put all the pinyin|together. It can only be like this, because Pinyin is not defined according to regular rules or some other mechanical rules. This is all you can do if you don’t miss anything and don’t have too many, and there aren’t many anyway.

>>> import re >>> d='shá' >>> data='This is a pinyin about shá' >>> re.search(d,data) <_sre.SRE_Match at 0x404e308>