Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "办公室" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 办公室 in Chinese?

办公室 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /pan˥˩.kʊŋ˥.ʂʐ̩˥˩/. It means “office.” bahn-GOONG-shrr: a hard fall, a high plateau, then another hard fall. Down, up, down.

bahn-GOONG-shrr: a hard fall, a high plateau, then another hard fall. Down, up, down.

办公室 /pan˥˩.kʊŋ˥.ʂʐ̩˥˩/

bàngōngshì

Fall, plateau, fall — a symmetrical shape with no sandhi anywhere. Both stops are unaspirated, which is worth flagging because English speakers add breath to initial consonants automatically, and here neither the b nor the g should have any. The nasal contrast between the first two syllables is a further self-check.

Listen: 办公室

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

bàn The lips seal and part, breath held back, onto a broad open "ah" closed with a front n. The pitch plunges from high to low.

gōng Contact far back, at the soft palate, released silently, onto a rounded vowel nearer "oo" than "oh", sealed by the back nasal. Held at the top.

shì Retroflex hiss with the tongue curled back, then voicing in place — no separate vowel. Another full descent, so the word ends where it began.

Hear it in a sentence

我每天在办公室工作。

Wǒ měi tiān zài bàngōngshì gōngzuò.

I work at the office every day.

Listen: 我每天在办公室工作。

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

我每天在办公室工作。 opens with wǒ and měi adjacent, both dipping, so wǒ rises. Then tiān holds level, zài plunges, and the three syllables of the office word follow, before gōngzuò adds a level and a fall. Four separate descents in the sentence, each needing its own reset to the top.

Where English speakers slip

Aspirating either stop changes the syllable — pàn and kōng respectively. Keep both releases silent. The third syllable draws the usual "she", with a vowel that does not exist. And the nasals get merged so that bàn and gōng rhyme, when the first should close at the teeth ridge and the second at the back of the mouth.