LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "多少" in Chinese?
dwor-shao: a high level first syllable, then a weak toneless second. Note that 少 loses its dipping tone entirely inside this word.
duōshao
The second syllable has gone neutral, and that reduction is not optional — duō shǎo with two full tones sounds like a list of opposites rather than a question word. The neutralisation also protects duō from anything to its right, since a toneless syllable cannot trigger a change.
Listen: 多少
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
这个多少钱？
Zhège duōshao qián?
How much does it cost?
Listen: 这个多少钱？
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
这个多少钱？ gives zhè falling, ge toneless, duō level, shao toneless, and qián rising. Three of the five syllables are either toneless or level, so the sentence has very little movement until the final climb on qián. That closing rise is the only real pitch event, and it is not a question marker — it is just the tone of the word for money.
Where English speakers slip
Restoring the dipping tone to shao is the standard error and it makes the question sound stilted. Let it fade. Beyond that, the retroflex is flattened into an English "sh" and the -uo final in duō is reduced to a plain "oh". And because the sentence is a question, learners add a rise on qián that is bigger than the tone requires.