How to Pronounce '百': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 百 in Chinese?

百 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /paɪ˨˩˦/. It means “hundred.” Say "buy" with the breath held back on the b, then sink the pitch to the bottom of your voice. In practice you will nearly always meet it as yìbǎi.

How do you pronounce "百" in Chinese?

Say "buy" with the breath held back on the b, then sink the pitch to the bottom of your voice. In practice you will nearly always meet it as yìbǎi.

百 /paɪ˨˩˦/

bǎi

Standing alone it dips, but 百 almost never stands alone — it is preceded by a number, and that is where the interesting change happens. Since bǎi is a third tone, a preceding 一 flips to a falling fourth: yìbǎi. Before another third tone 百 itself would rise, though that combination is rare in practice.

Listen: 百

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Sound it out

b- Lips close and open with no puff of air escaping. Because English has no unaspirated voiceless stop in this position, the sound genuinely sits between our b and our p.

-ai The diphthong of "eye": start wide open on "ah" and close toward "ee". The starting point is further open than in English "buy".

bǎi (dip) The pitch descends to the floor of your range and rests there. The long diphthong gives it plenty of room, so this is one of the easier third tones to produce fully.

Hear it in a sentence

这个一百块钱。

Zhège yìbǎi kuài qián.

This costs a hundred yuan.

Listen: 这个一百块钱。

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这个一百块钱。 shows the sandhi already applied in the pinyin: yì rather than yī, precisely because bǎi carries a third tone. After that, kuài falls hard and qián rises, so the price phrase ends by climbing. The zhège at the start is a fall plus a toneless syllable, which is why the sentence begins with a small drop and then a flat patch.

Where English speakers slip

Two things go astray. The vowel often comes out as the tight English "eye" of "buy" rather than opening properly on "ah" first; widen the mouth at the start. More seriously, learners produce a strongly aspirated "pai", which is a different syllable entirely — 拍 or 排 depending on tone. Keep the breath in and let the release be silent.