How to Pronounce '好': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 好 in Chinese?

好 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /xɑʊ˨˩˦/. It means “good / well.” how, but with a scraped h and a pitch that sinks to the floor before easing back up. One of the first tones learners meet and one of the last they get right.

How do you pronounce "好" in Chinese?

how, but with a scraped h and a pitch that sinks to the floor before easing back up. One of the first tones learners meet and one of the last they get right.

好 /xɑʊ˨˩˦/

hǎo

Alone it is a plain third tone. In combination it is one of the busiest sandhi participants in the language: hěn hǎo and nǐ hǎo both force the preceding syllable to rise, while hǎo itself rises when it precedes another third tone, as in hǎo jǐ ge. Its own tone changes only when it is the first of two.

Listen: 好

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Sound it out

h- Friction at the back of the mouth rather than an open breath. The tongue body rises toward the soft palate and the air rasps through, a softer relative of the ch in "Bach".

-ao A wide glide: the mouth opens on "ah" and closes toward "oo". Give it time — this is one of Mandarin's longer finals and rushing it flattens the tone.

hǎo (dip) Down to the bottom, hold, then a small lift if nothing follows. When another word comes after it, the lift usually vanishes and only the low portion survives.

Hear it in a sentence

今天天气很好。

Jīntiān tiānqì hěn hǎo.

The weather is nice today.

Listen: 今天天气很好。

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今天天气很好。 ends with the classic hěn hǎo pairing, so hěn converts to a rising tone and hǎo keeps the dip — hén hǎo. Ahead of that, jīntiān tiānqì gives you three high or falling syllables in a row, so the sentence descends into its low ending. That contour, bright then low, is very characteristic of Mandarin adjective sentences.

Where English speakers slip

Said as English "how", the word comes out with a breathy h and a flat or falling pitch, which reads to a listener as a fourth tone and changes the meaning. Two corrections: put friction in the h, and make the pitch genuinely sink rather than merely start low. Learners also tend to clip the -ao glide short, which robs the tone of the room it needs to move.