Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "菜" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 菜 in Chinese?

菜 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tsʰaɪ˥˩/. It means “dish / cuisine.” tsai with a strong puff of air, dropping hard. The c is an aspirated "ts", not an English k or s.

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

菜 /tsʰaɪ˥˩/

cài

Fixed in itself, and a trigger for the negator: 不 before it becomes bú. The contrast with 才 cái, a rising tone with identical segments, is worth holding in mind — one is a very common adverb and the other a very common noun, and only the pitch direction separates them.

Listen: 菜

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Sound it out

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

-ai Wide open on "ah", closing toward "ee". The long diphthong gives the falling tone plenty of room.

cài (falling) From the ceiling straight to the floor. Combined with the aspirated onset, the whole syllable has an expelled, forceful quality.

Hear it in a sentence

中国菜很好吃。

Zhōngguó cài hěn hǎochī.

Chinese food is delicious.

Listen: 中国菜很好吃。

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中国菜很好吃。 ends with the standard conversion: hěn and hǎo are adjacent dipping tones, so hěn rises before hǎo keeps its dip and chī jumps to a level high. The whole phrase hén hǎo chī is worth learning as a memorised rhythmic unit, since it comes up at every meal.

Where English speakers slip

Reading c as English "k" or "s" gives kài or sài, neither of which is the word. Start with an audible "ts". Under-aspirating instead gives zài, which is one of the most common words in the language, so the puff of air genuinely matters. And the hěn hǎo conversion is skipped as often here as anywhere.