Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "错" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 错 in Chinese?

错 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tsʰwo˥˩/. It means “wrong / mistaken.” tswor with a strong puff of air, dropping hard. The c is an aspirated "ts", not an English k or s.

tswor with a strong puff of air, dropping hard. The c is an aspirated "ts", not an English k or s.

错 /tsʰwo˥˩/

cuò

The fall is fixed, and it triggers the negator: 不错 becomes bú cuò, an extremely common phrase meaning "not bad". That expression is worth learning as a whole unit precisely because the rising bú in it looks wrong to anyone who has only memorised the citation tone of 不.

Listen: 错

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Sound it out

c- Pinyin's most misread letter. The tongue tip touches the teeth ridge, releases into a hiss, and a real gust of breath follows — the aspirated partner of z.

-uo Lips round for "oo" and then open toward "aw". Both halves have to be there, otherwise the syllable reduces to a plain "oh" and stops sounding like this word.

cuò (falling) The voice plunges from high to low across the glide. Combined with the aspiration at the front, the whole syllable has a forceful, expelled quality that suits the meaning.

Hear it in a sentence

这个号码错了。

Zhège hàomǎ cuò le.

The number is wrong.

Listen: 这个号码错了。

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这个号码错了。 places cuò before the toneless le, so the fall is followed by a weightless tail at the low pitch. Ahead of it, hàomǎ pairs a falling tone with a dipping one, and no sandhi applies since they are not both third tones. The sentence therefore drops, fades, drops, dips, drops, fades — heavily weighted toward the bottom of the range.

Where English speakers slip

Reading c as English "k" or "s" produces kuò or suǒ, neither of which is the word. It must start with an audible "ts" as at the end of "cats". Under-aspirating instead gives zuò, which is a real and very common word, so the puff of air is genuinely load-bearing here. And -uo routinely flattens to "oh", losing the rounded onset.