How to Pronounce '打电话': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 打电话 in Chinese?

打电话 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ta˨˩˦.tjɛn˥˩.xwa˥˩/. It means “to make a phone call.” DAH-dyen-HWAH: a low dipping first syllable followed by two hard falls. The middle syllable is closer to "dyen" than "dee-an".

How do you pronounce "打电话" in Chinese?

DAH-dyen-HWAH: a low dipping first syllable followed by two hard falls. The middle syllable is closer to "dyen" than "dee-an".

打电话 /ta˨˩˦.tjɛn˥˩.xwa˥˩/

dǎ diànhuà

A dip followed by two falls, with no sandhi anywhere. The rhythm point is that consecutive fourth tones are never identical: diàn is compressed and does not descend all the way, while huà gets the fuller drop at the end of the phrase. Making them the same length produces a hammered, unnatural rhythm.

Listen: 打电话

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

dǎ Unaspirated d onto a wide open "ah", with the pitch sinking to the bottom. This is the verb, and it carries the only third tone in the phrase.

diàn The -ian final is deceptive: despite the a in the spelling, it is closer to "yen" than "yahn", ending with the tongue tip at the ridge. The pitch drops steeply.

huà Scraped h, immediate lip-rounding for the w-glide, then a broad open "ah". Another sharp fall, so the phrase ends with two consecutive drops.

Hear it in a sentence

我待会儿给你打电话。

Wǒ dāihuìr gěi nǐ dǎ diànhuà.

I'll call you later.

Listen: 我待会儿给你打电话。

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

我待会儿给你打电话。 hides a three-way sandhi in the middle. Gěi, nǐ and dǎ are three consecutive third tones, and Mandarin raises all but the last: géi ní dǎ. So two syllables written with dipping hooks come out as rises. This is one of the more demanding sequences a beginner will meet, and it is completely routine for a native speaker.

Where English speakers slip

The -ian final draws the standard error, with learners saying "dee-AHN" in two beats and an open vowel. It is one beat and the vowel is a tight "eh". Beyond that, the three-third-tone run in the example sentence is where most people give up and produce three dips, which is slow, effortful and unmistakably foreign. Practise géi ní dǎ as a fixed unit.