Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "穿" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 穿 in Chinese?

穿 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʈʂʰwan˥/. It means “to wear / to put on.” chwahn with the tongue curled back and a strong puff of air, held high and flat. Rounded glide, open vowel, front n.

chwahn with the tongue curled back and a strong puff of air, held high and flat. Rounded glide, open vowel, front n.

穿 /ʈʂʰwan˥/

chuān

Level, and nothing shifts it. It is a useful anchor in clothing sentences because it holds the pitch high, so any third tone before it keeps a full dip and any 不 before it stays as bù. Nothing about this word forces a change in its neighbours.

Listen: 穿

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Sound it out

ch- Retroflex and aspirated: the curled tongue tip touches behind the ridge, releases into a hiss, and a real gust of breath follows. The aspirated partner of zh.

-uan Rounded w-glide into a wide open "ah", closed with the tongue tip at the ridge. Coming out of a retroflex initial, the tongue has a long way to travel.

chuān (level) High and steady through all that movement. The syllable has three articulatory stages and the pitch must stay flat across all of them, which is genuinely difficult at speed.

Hear it in a sentence

今天穿什么？

Jīntiān chuān shénme?

What should I wear today?

Listen: 今天穿什么？

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今天穿什么？ opens with two high level syllables, jīn and tiān, and then chuān makes three in a row — an unusually long high plateau. Then shén climbs and me fades. Sustaining three consecutive first tones without letting the pitch sag is the whole technical demand of this short question.

Where English speakers slip

Under-aspirating gives zhuān, a different word, and the aspiration is easy to lose because the tongue is already busy curling back. Push the air out audibly. The vowel is the second issue: learners keep the lips rounded and produce "chwon", when the mouth should open wide and unround for the "ah" before the front n closes it.