How to Pronounce '和': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 和 in Chinese?

和 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /xɤ˧˥/. It means “and.” huh, with a rasping h and a rising pitch. The vowel pulls back and up rather than sitting in the middle like an English "uh".

How do you pronounce "和" in Chinese?

huh, with a rasping h and a rising pitch. The vowel pulls back and up rather than sitting in the middle like an English "uh".

和 /xɤ˧˥/

hé

The rising contour is fixed and immune to context. What is worth flagging is that this character is a chameleon in other roles — it is read hé as "and", but huó, hè and hú in other words — so the tone here is not a general property of the character, only of this meaning.

Listen: 和

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Sound it out

h- Back-of-mouth friction, the tongue body raised toward the soft palate. Since the following vowel is also produced at the back, the whole syllable is made in one small region.

-é Mandarin's e in its full stressed form: unrounded lips, tongue retracted and slightly raised. It is not the "eh" of "bet" and not quite the "uh" of "but" — think of "uh" with the tongue pulled further back.

hé (rising) Pitch climbs from mid to high, which on such a short syllable means the climb has to be quick and steep to register at all.

Hear it in a sentence

你和我去看电影。

Nǐ hé wǒ qù kàn diànyǐng.

You and I are going to the movies.

Listen: 你和我去看电影。

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你和我去看电影。 sandwiches hé between two third tones, nǐ and wǒ, and this is a nice demonstration that sandhi requires actual adjacency: because the rising hé sits between them, neither pronoun changes and both keep their full low dips. The sentence then rises to a level high on diàn and falls away.

Where English speakers slip

Learners frequently pronounce it "hey" or "heh", pulling the vowel forward toward English territory. The tongue needs to go back. A separate and very common mistake is overusing the word — but on the pronunciation side, the flat delivery is the giveaway: without a clear rise, hé is easily heard as hē (to drink), which is a first tone and appears constantly in the same kinds of sentences.