Quick answer
A pung is three of a kind, a kong four and a quint five. The Charleston is the tile pass before play, and the courtesy pass is an optional swap across after it. Soap is the white dragon, which doubles as zero. A dead hand can no longer win, and a wall game ends with no winner.
The first night at a mahjong table is mostly vocabulary. People say soap and jokerless and courtesy and you nod along and hope it becomes clear. Here is the whole vocabulary in one place, in the order you are likely to hear it.
The tiles
Craks, bams, and dots are the three suits, each numbered one through nine. Craks show a Chinese character, bams show bamboo sticks (the one bam is usually a bird), dots show circles. Winds are north, east, west, and south. Dragons come in three colors, red, green, and white, each tied to a suit. Flowers are the decorative tiles, eight of them in a standard American set.
Soap is the white dragon, so called because the blank or framed tile looks like a bar of soap. It doubles as a zero in card lines that call for one. Joker is the wild tile, eight in an American set, and it can stand in for a tile in any group of three or more, never in a single or a pair.
The setup and the deal
The wall is the tiles built into rows at the start of a hand. East is the dealer position, which rotates. The rack is the stand holding your tiles, hiding them from opponents while you sort. A pusher is the sliding bar some racks have for pushing your wall forward.
Charleston is the ritual passing sequence at the start of every hand: three tiles right, three across, three left, then optionally back the other way, then a final courtesy pass. It exists to give everyone a fighting chance at a real hand, and because a passed tile is gone, it shapes the hand you end up playing.
Passing terms
Blind pass, also called stealing a tile, means passing along tiles you were just handed without looking at them. It is legal only on the final pass of each Charleston, the left that ends the first round and the right that ends the second, and never on an across pass. Courtesy pass is the optional swap of up to three tiles with the player across from you once the Charleston is over. Each of you names a number, the lower one is used, and zero is a legal answer. No joker may be passed in any of it.
During play
Pung is three of a kind. Kong is four. Quint is five, which needs at least one joker unless it is flowers. Pair is two, and a pair can never contain a joker. Exposure is a called set laid face up on your rack. Calling is claiming a discard to complete a set.
Redeeming a joker means swapping the real tile for a joker sitting in someone's exposure, which you may do on your turn. Naming your discard means saying the tile out loud as you throw it, which is not optional etiquette, it is how the table hears a call in time.
How hands end
Mahjong is the call you make when your hand is complete, and it ends the hand immediately. Dead hand means your hand cannot legally win, for example after an incorrect exposure, and you stop picking and discarding for the rest of the hand. Wall game means the wall ran out with no winner, so nobody pays.
Jokerless means completing a hand with no jokers in it, and under League rules it doubles the payment, except on a Singles and Pairs hand. Self-picked means you drew your winning tile from the wall rather than calling it, and all three opponents pay double for it. Both are League rules, so a table that plays either one differently should say so before the first hand.
Words for what your hand is doing
You will hear players talk about which direction a hand is going, or which category it belongs to, such as consecutive runs, like numbers, or winds and dragons. Those names follow sections of the card, and the skill is recognizing the shape at a glance.
Getting fluent in that recognition is the real learning curve, and it is the thing a card cannot teach you, because the card shows destinations while your rack shows a starting point. Our AI coach reads a dealt hand for free and names the direction it is going, with the reasoning spelled out, which is how the pattern eventually becomes yours.
Put it into practice
New to the game? Start the course at Lesson 1, Meet the Tiles. The first three lessons are free and need no account.
Already play? Have the coach read a real dealt hand for you, free. It names the direction the hand goes for, what to keep, what to pass, and the reasoning behind each call.
To see these terms used on real tiles, let our AI coach read a hand. It uses these terms in context, explaining each call as it makes it. Free, no account needed.