LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "公园" in Chinese?
goong-YWEN: a high level first syllable with an unaspirated g, then a rising second built on the rounded front ü.
gōngyuán
Level into rising, with the climb compressed because gōng has already taken the pitch high. Native speakers dip slightly at the start of yuán to give it somewhere to rise from. The spelling deserves equal attention: -uan after y is the ü-based final, quite different from the -uan in guān or huàn.
Listen: 公园
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
我们每天在公园跑步。
Wǒmen měi tiān zài gōngyuán pǎobù.
We run in the park every day.
Listen: 我们每天在公园跑步。
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我们每天在公园跑步。 protects wǒ with the toneless men, so it keeps its dip — and note that měi therefore does not trigger a conversion on wǒ here, unlike in 我每天 where the two are adjacent. Then pǎo keeps its dip because bù falls. Two dipping tones and neither one converts.
Where English speakers slip
"Ywan" with a plain w-glide is the standard error for the second syllable, and it produces a vowel that does not belong here. The tongue must stay forward while the lips round. Aspirating the g gives kōng, a real word. And the compressed rise after a level tone gets flattened, leaving yuán sounding like another first tone.