LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "车" in Chinese?
chuh with the tongue curled back and a strong puff of air, held high and flat. The vowel is pulled back and unrounded.
chē
Nothing in the system touches this pitch, and it makes a stable neighbour: any dipping tone before it keeps a full descent, and 一 before it becomes a falling yì. The syllable also appears in a long list of transport compounds — 火车, 汽车, 出租车 — always level, which makes it a reliable anchor.
Listen: 车
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
我的车是新的。
Wǒ de chē shì xīn de.
My car is new.
Listen: 我的车是新的。
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我的车是新的。 keeps wǒ at a full dip because de is toneless, then chē holds level, shì plunges, xīn holds level again, and the final de fades. Two toneless particles bracket the sentence's content, and the alternation between level and falling in between is what stops it sounding monotonous.
Where English speakers slip
Under-aspirating gives zhē. Push the air. The vowel is the bigger issue: English speakers produce "chair" or "cheh", both far too front, when the tongue should be pulled back toward a grunt. And the retroflex flattens into an English ch, which pulls the syllable toward the palatal qiē.