LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "短" in Chinese?
dwahn, low and sagging. Unaspirated d, immediate lip-rounding, a wide open vowel, and a front n.
duǎn
The dipping contour survives unless a third tone follows. Its partner in meaning, 长 cháng, is a rising tone, so the long-short opposition is carried by both the consonants and the pitch — unlike 开 and 关, where both halves of the pair share a tone.
Listen: 短
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
我的头发很短。
Wǒ de tóufa hěn duǎn.
My hair is short.
Listen: 我的头发很短。
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我的头发很短。 has wǒ followed by the toneless de, so no sandhi fires at the start and wǒ keeps its full dip. Then tóufa gives a rise and a toneless syllable, and hěn duǎn puts two dipping tones in contact — so hěn rises and duǎn keeps the dip. The sentence has three written third tones and only one is spoken as one.
Where English speakers slip
Learners keep the lips rounded through the vowel and produce "dwon", when the mouth should open and unround for the "ah". Aspirating the d gives tuǎn. And the hěn duǎn sandhi is a very common miss, because hěn appears before adjectives so often that beginners stop checking what follows it — but half the time the following adjective dips too.