LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "当然" in Chinese?
dahng-RAHN: a high level first syllable with an unaspirated d, then a rising second with a retroflex buzz and flat lips.
dāngrán
Level into rising, with no sandhi. The nasal contrast inside the word is worth using as a check: the first syllable closes at the back of the mouth, the second at the front, and if both feel identical then one of them has drifted. Both vowels are the same open "ah", so the endings are the only difference.
Listen: 当然
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
当然可以！
Dāngrán kěyǐ!
Of course, that's fine!
Listen: 当然可以！
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
当然可以！ ends with the classic conversion: kě and yǐ are both dipping tones and adjacent, so kě rises. The exclamation therefore runs level, rising, rising, dipping — three consecutive climbs of a sort before the final sag. Getting rán and ké to sound like the same rising shape, despite their different vowels, is the exercise here.
Where English speakers slip
Chief among the casualties is the r: rounding the lips as English does turns rán into something like "ran". Unround completely and curl the tip back so the sound buzzes. Aspirating the d gives tāng. And the kěyǐ conversion at the end is one that beginners skip even after they have learned it, because both syllables look like plain third tones on the page.