Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "对" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 对 in Chinese?

对 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tweɪ˥˩/. It means “right / correct.” dway, dropping hard. Unaspirated d, immediate lip-rounding, then a glide with a hidden middle vowel.

dway, dropping hard. Unaspirated d, immediate lip-rounding, then a glide with a hidden middle vowel.

对 /tweɪ˥˩/

duì

Nothing alters the fall, and 对 is one of the most common triggers for the 不 rule in the language: bú duì, meaning "not right", is a phrase you will hear constantly, and it is always the rising form. Getting that automatic is worth more than memorising the rule abstractly.

Listen: 对

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Sound it out

d- The tip touches the ridge behind the upper teeth, released silently. Because the next sound needs rounded lips, they are already pursed during the closure.

-ui Written with two letters but containing three positions — a rounded glide, a short "eh", and a close at "ee". Fully spelled it is -uei, and hearing that middle vowel keeps it from collapsing into "dwee".

duì (falling) A steep, decisive drop across the whole glide. Since the mouth is moving through three positions while the pitch descends, the two gestures have to be kept independent.

Hear it in a sentence

你说得对。

Nǐ shuō de duì.

You are right.

Listen: 你说得对。

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你说得对。 keeps nǐ at a full dip because shuō is level. Then de goes toneless and duì drops hard at the end. The sentence therefore descends, plateaus, empties out, and plunges — and the toneless de is essential, because giving it a full tone turns a natural compliment into a stilted recitation.

Where English speakers slip

Learners collapse the vowel to "dwee", losing the middle "eh", or split it into "doo-ay" with two beats. It is one beat with three vowel positions. Aspirating the d gives tuì, a different word. And the tone tends to soften when the word is used as agreement, because English says "right" with a gentle fall — Mandarin wants the full plunge.