Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "回" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 回 in Chinese?

回 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /xweɪ˧˥/. It means “to return / to go back.” hway, rising from mid to high. The h is a scrape at the back of the mouth, followed immediately by lip-rounding.

hway, rising from mid to high. The h is a scrape at the back of the mouth, followed immediately by lip-rounding.

回 /xweɪ˧˥/

huí

Rising, and reliably so. It is worth pairing mentally with 会 huì, a fourth tone with the identical segments — one climbs, the other drops, and nothing else separates them. Verb sentences can accommodate both, so the tone genuinely disambiguates.

Listen: 回

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Sound it out

h- Friction at the soft palate rather than an open breath. Since the next sound requires rounded lips, you round while the friction is still happening.

-ui Spelled with two letters, containing three positions: a rounded w-glide, a short "eh", and a close at "ee". Written out fully it is -uei, and that middle vowel is what stops it collapsing into "wee".

huí (rising) The tone lifts, finishing at the top of your range across all that movement. The syllable is busy, so the rise needs to be deliberate or it disappears under the vowel gymnastics.

Hear it in a sentence

我明天回北京。

Wǒ míngtiān huí Běijīng.

I'm going back to Beijing tomorrow.

Listen: 我明天回北京。

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我明天回北京。 has wǒ before míng, a second tone, so the pronoun keeps its dip. Then huí climbs, and Běijīng gives a dip and a level high. Two rising tones in the sentence, míng and huí, are separated by the level tiān — which means the pitch climbs, plateaus, climbs again, then drops and rises. Plenty of movement for six syllables.

Where English speakers slip

Learners collapse the middle vowel and say "hwee", which thins the syllable and makes it harder to distinguish from other -ui words. Let the "eh" be audible. The h is the other issue: a soft English "h" before a rounded glide often disappears entirely, leaving "way". Add friction so the consonant survives.