LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "出生" in Chinese?
choo-SHUNG, both syllables high and flat. Two retroflex initials in a row, one aspirated and one not.
chūshēng
Two first tones in a row, so the whole word sits at the top of your range with no pitch movement at all. That makes it an excellent calibration exercise: if the second syllable drifts lower than the first, your level tone is sagging. No sandhi is possible, since first tones never change.
Listen: 出生
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
我出生在中国。
Wǒ chūshēng zài Zhōngguó.
I was born in China.
Listen: 我出生在中国。
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我出生在中国。 keeps wǒ fully low before the level chū, then holds high for two beats, drops sharply on zài, and finishes with Zhōngguó — a level high and then a rise. So the sentence has a long high plateau, one plunge, and a climb back up, with only the opening syllable at the bottom of the range.
Where English speakers slip
The aspiration contrast between the two syllables is where this word gets interesting and where learners flatten it: chū has breath, shēng does not, and producing them the same way makes the word indistinct. Beyond that, both initials get replaced by English "ch" and "sh" with a flat tongue, and the -eng ending routinely drifts forward to shēn.