Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "草" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 草 in Chinese?

草 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tsʰɑʊ˨˩˦/. It means “grass.” tsao with a strong puff of air, low and sagging. The c is an aspirated "ts", not an English c.

tsao with a strong puff of air, low and sagging. The c is an aspirated "ts", not an English c.

草 /tsʰɑʊ˨˩˦/

cǎo

The next syllable decides. Its close neighbour is 早 zǎo, which shares the vowel and the tone and differs only in aspiration — one has a puff of air and the other does not. Grass and early are otherwise identical, which makes the breath genuinely load-bearing.

Listen: 草

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Sound it out

c- Contact at the teeth ridge, released into a hiss with a genuine gust of breath behind it — the aspirated partner of z.

-ao The jaw drops for "ah" with the jaw down, closing toward "oo". A long final, which gives the dipping tone room to sink properly.

cǎo (dip) The voice settles at the bottom and rests, with the final lift appearing when the word ends a phrase. The length of the glide makes this an easy third tone to sustain.

Hear it in a sentence

孩子们在草地上玩。

Háizimen zài cǎodì shàng wán.

The children play on the grass.

Listen: 孩子们在草地上玩。

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孩子们在草地上玩。 keeps cǎo at a full dip because dì falls. Before it, hái climbs and zi and men both fade; after it, dì and shàng both plunge and wán climbs. So the sentence has one dipping tone and it does not convert, since neither neighbour dips.

Where English speakers slip

Treating the letter c as English "k" or "s" gives kǎo or sǎo, both real words. Start with an audible "ts". Under-aspirating gives zǎo, which as noted is the word for early. And the long glide gets shortened, which robs the dipping tone of the space it needs to descend and lift.