LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "旧" in Chinese?
jyo, one beat, dropping hard. Unaspirated palatal j and a glide with a hidden middle vowel.
jiù
The fall itself is fixed, but it changes what comes before: 不旧 becomes bú jiù. It is a true homophone of 就 jiù, one of the most common function words in the language, so this exact syllable will turn up constantly in completely unrelated meanings.
Listen: 旧
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
那个房子很旧。
Nàge fángzi hěn jiù.
That house is very old.
Listen: 那个房子很旧。
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那个房子很旧。 puts hěn before jiù, and since jiù is falling rather than dipping, hěn keeps its full third tone. The sentence therefore runs fall, toneless, rise, toneless, dip, fall — which is remarkably varied for six syllables, and the two toneless valleys are what stop it sounding like a list.
Where English speakers slip
Let air escape on the j and you get qiù, and the vowel routinely flattens to "joe", losing the initial "ee" glide. Both errors together make the syllable unrecognisable. The tone gets under-produced too, because adjectives at the end of a sentence feel like a place to relax — but a level jiu is not this word, and the drop needs to be as decisive as anywhere else.