Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "给" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 给 in Chinese?

给 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /keɪ˨˩˦/. It means “for / to (someone).” gay with no puff of air, said on a low sagging pitch. The g is unaspirated, so it sits between an English g and k.

gay with no puff of air, said on a low sagging pitch. The g is unaspirated, so it sits between an English g and k.

给 /keɪ˨˩˦/

gěi

Few words get caught in sandhi as often as this one, because so much of what precedes it also dips. Qǐng gěi, wǒ gěi and nǐ gěi all convert the preceding word to a rising tone. When 给 itself precedes a third tone, it is the one that rises instead.

Listen: 给

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Sound it out

g- Back of the tongue against the soft palate, released silently with no gust of breath. Because English g is voiced, an English speaker's version buzzes; Mandarin's does not.

-ei A tight diphthong from "eh" to "ee", noticeably shorter than the corresponding English vowel.

gěi (dip) Settles at the bottom and rests of your range. With the diphthong moving upward through the vowel while the pitch moves down, the two gestures pull in opposite directions, which is what makes this syllable feel awkward at first.

Hear it in a sentence

这个礼物给你。

Zhège lǐwù gěi nǐ.

This gift is for you.

Listen: 这个礼物给你。

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请给我一杯咖啡。 opens with three consecutive third tones: qǐng, gěi, wǒ. Mandarin handles a run like this by raising everything but the last, so both qǐng and gěi become rising and only wǒ keeps its dip. What is written as three low tones is spoken as up, up, down — one of the more counterintuitive things a beginner has to internalise.

Where English speakers slip

Two problems. The consonant gets voiced into an English "g", which is tolerable but audibly foreign; try to release it silently instead. More importantly, in the sentence above learners produce three genuine third tones in a row, which is slow, effortful and simply not how the language works. If you find yourself dipping three times, you have not applied the rule.