How to Pronounce '吃': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 吃 in Chinese?

吃 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʈʂʰʐ̩˥/. It means “to eat.” Closer to "chrr" than to "chee". Curl the tongue back, release with a strong puff of air, and hold the pitch high and dead level.

How do you pronounce "吃" in Chinese?

Closer to "chrr" than to "chee". Curl the tongue back, release with a strong puff of air, and hold the pitch high and dead level.

吃 /ʈʂʰʐ̩˥/

chī

Nothing can shift this syllable's pitch, since level tones are immune to sandhi — they never change under the influence of neighbours. The only thing that varies is length: in a compound such as chīfàn the syllable gets shortened, but the pitch stays pinned at the top.

Listen: 吃

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Sound it out

ch- A retroflex affricate with aspiration: the curled tongue tip touches behind the ridge, releases into a hiss, and a distinct gust of breath follows. It is the aspirated partner of zh.

-i Again a decoy vowel. After ch, the letter i signals that the tongue holds its retroflex position and simply hums — no "ee" anywhere in the syllable.

chī (high level) The first tone: pick a comfortable high pitch and stay on it without wavering, like holding a single sung note. Any drift downward will be heard as a different tone.

Hear it in a sentence

我想吃点东西。

Wǒ xiǎng chī diǎn dōngxi.

I want to eat something.

Listen: 我想吃点东西。

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我想吃点东西。 puts wǒ and xiǎng together, so wǒ rises to a second tone, then chī arrives high and flat by contrast — a real jump in pitch. Afterwards diǎn dips and dōngxi runs high-then-toneless. The sentence therefore climbs sharply into chī, and that leap is a good way to hear whether your first tone is really at the top of your range.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers overwhelmingly say "chee", importing a vowel that is not there and flattening the retroflex into the ch of "cheese". The tongue should be curled back far enough that the syllable sounds slightly hollow. And because English has no level tones, the pitch tends to sag; sustain it as if you were humming a note rather than speaking a word.