How to Pronounce '公共汽车': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 公共汽车 in Chinese?

公共汽车 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kʊŋ˥.kʊŋ˥˩.tɕʰi˥˩.ʈʂʰɤ˥/. It means “bus.” goong-GOONG-chee-CHUH: level, falling, falling, level. The first two syllables are identical except for their tone.

How do you pronounce "公共汽车" in Chinese?

goong-GOONG-chee-CHUH: level, falling, falling, level. The first two syllables are identical except for their tone.

公共汽车 /kʊŋ˥.kʊŋ˥˩.tɕʰi˥˩.ʈʂʰɤ˥/

gōnggòng qìchē

Level, fall, fall, level — a symmetrical four-syllable shape with no sandhi. The first two syllables are a genuine minimal pair, differing only in pitch, which makes this word an unusually direct demonstration of what tone does. If your gōng and gòng sound alike, the word is unrecognisable.

Listen: 公共汽车

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Sound it out

gōng Contact far back, at the soft palate, released with no breath, onto a rounded vowel nearer "oo" than "oh", sealed by the back nasal. Held at the top.

gòng The very same syllable, but the pitch now plunges from high to low. Nothing else changes — this pair is as pure a tone contrast as the language offers.

qì Aspirated palatal q with a real gust of breath, onto a tense spread "ee". Another full descent.

chē Retroflex and aspirated, onto the back unrounded e with the lips flat. Held level at the top, so the word ends where it began.

Hear it in a sentence

我们坐公共汽车去。

Wǒmen zuò gōnggòng qìchē qù.

Let's go by bus.

Listen: 我们坐公共汽车去。

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

我们坐公共汽车去。 protects wǒ with the toneless men, so it keeps its dip. Then zuò plunges, and the four syllables of the bus word follow before qù plunges again. Four separate descents in one sentence, and the identical-but-for-tone pair sitting right in the middle.

Where English speakers slip

Producing gōng and gòng identically is the specific failure, and it happens because repeating a syllable invites English speakers to say it the same way twice. Hold the first high and drop the second. Beyond that, aspirating the g gives kōng, and the two aspirated syllables in the second half both tend to lose their breath.