Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "笔" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 笔 in Chinese?

笔 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /pi˨˩˦/. It means “pen.” bee with no puff of air, low and sagging. Short and simple to articulate; the tone is the whole difficulty.

bee with no puff of air, low and sagging. Short and simple to articulate; the tone is the whole difficulty.

笔 /pi˨˩˦/

bǐ

The next syllable decides. Its neighbourhood is crowded — bī, bí and bì are all real syllables — so the dip is genuinely load-bearing. Because pens are usually counted, the measure word before it matters more than what comes after: a dipping measure word would force 笔 upward only if it came first, which it does not.

Listen: 笔

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

Sound it out

b- The lips seal and part, breath held back — unaspirated, so neither English b nor English p exactly.

-ǐ A tense, spread "ee" with no drift onto or off it. The tongue is high and front and stays put for the whole vowel.

the dip The voice sinks to the bottom and rests. On a short vowel with no consonant ending, the low pitch has to arrive immediately rather than being approached.

Hear it in a sentence

你能借我一支笔吗？

Nǐ néng jiè wǒ yì zhī bǐ ma?

Can you lend me a pen?

Listen: 你能借我一支笔吗？

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

你能借我一支笔吗？ shows the falling branch of the 一 rule: zhī is a level tone, so 一 becomes yì. Nǐ keeps its dip because néng rises, and wǒ keeps its dip because yì falls. Then bǐ dips and ma fades toneless. Three unchanged dipping tones and one converted 一.

Where English speakers slip

Letting air out on the b gives gives pǐ. Keep the release silent. The vowel is often laxed toward the "i" of English "bit" when Mandarin wants a tense, fully spread "ee". And in the example sentence, learners produce yī zhī with a level 一 rather than the converted falling yì.