LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "弟弟" in Chinese?
DEE-di: a hard-falling first syllable, then a weak toneless echo of it. A reduplicated kinship term, and the second half always goes flat.
dìdi
Reduplicated kinship words neutralise their second syllable as a rule — 弟弟, 哥哥, 姐姐, 妹妹, 妈妈, 爸爸 all follow it. So the pattern here is strong-weak, and giving both halves a full tone makes the word sound like a dictionary entry. It is the same reduction seen in 谢谢.
Listen: 弟弟
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
我弟弟今年十岁。
Wǒ dìdi jīnnián shí suì.
My younger brother is ten this year.
Listen: 我弟弟今年十岁。
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我弟弟今年十岁。 keeps wǒ at a full dip because dì falls. Then di fades, jīn holds high, nián rises, shí rises again, and suì plunges. Two consecutive rises on nián and shí need separate downward resets — and since one means "year" and the other "ten", flattening them makes the age genuinely hard to parse.
Where English speakers slip
Giving the second 弟 a full falling tone is the standard error and it affects the whole kinship set. Let it go slack. Aspirating the d gives tì, and English speakers aspirate initial stops by default. And the vowel is often laxed to the "i" of "bit" when Mandarin wants a tense, fully spread "ee".