Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "个" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 个 in Chinese?

个 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kɤ˥˩/. It means “(general measure word).” guh — unaspirated k, back unrounded vowel, and in real speech usually no tone at all, even though the dictionary gives it a falling one.

guh — unaspirated k, back unrounded vowel, and in real speech usually no tone at all, even though the dictionary gives it a falling one.

个 /kɤ˥˩/

gè

The subtlety here is that 个 behaves as a fourth tone for the purposes of calculating sandhi in the words around it, but as a neutral tone when actually spoken. That is why 一 becomes yí in front of it — the rule reads the underlying falling tone — even though what you hear afterwards is a weak, pitchless ge.

Listen: 个

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Sound it out

g- The back of the tongue touches the soft palate and releases with no puff of air. English g is voiced and English k is aspirated; this is neither, so it lands somewhere between them.

-e In its full form a back unrounded vowel, but here it is usually reduced almost to a schwa because the syllable is unstressed.

tone (or lack of it) Listed as a fourth tone, spoken as a neutral one in the vast majority of contexts. It leans on whatever number precedes it rather than carrying its own pitch.

Hear it in a sentence

我要一个苹果。

Wǒ yào yí ge píngguǒ.

I want an apple.

Listen: 我要一个苹果。

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我要一个苹果。 makes this visible. The pinyin gives yí ge: 一 has risen because 个 is underlyingly falling, yet ge itself is written without a tone mark because it is spoken flat and weak. Then píngguǒ ends the sentence with a rise and a dip, and since guǒ is final it gets the full dipping contour.

Where English speakers slip

The main error is giving it a strong, clearly falling pronunciation — "GUH!" — which turns a piece of grammatical connective tissue into a stressed word. It should be quick and almost thrown away. Aspiration is the other risk: an aspirated version becomes kè, a different syllable, and English speakers add that puff automatically after a vowel-final word like yí.