Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "觉得" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 觉得 in Chinese?

觉得 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tɕɥɛ˧˥.tɤ/. It means “to think / to feel.” jweh-duh, with a rising first syllable and a weak toneless second. The vowel in the first syllable involves the rounded front ü, not a plain w-glide.

jweh-duh, with a rising first syllable and a weak toneless second. The vowel in the first syllable involves the rounded front ü, not a plain w-glide.

觉得 /tɕɥɛ˧˥.tɤ/

juéde

Rising plus neutral, so no sandhi is possible in either direction. The rhythm is decidedly lopsided — jué is long because of all the vowel movement inside it, and de is barely half a beat. Evening them out makes the verb sound like two separate words rather than one.

Listen: 觉得

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Sound it out

jué An unaspirated palatal j, then the -üe final: lips rounded and tongue high and front at the same time, gliding out to an open "eh". The u in this spelling is ü, because it follows j. The pitch climbs from mid to high.

de Toneless and reduced: an unaspirated d onto a schwa, over almost immediately. It takes the high pitch that jué finished on and then stops.

Hear it in a sentence

你觉得怎么样？

Nǐ juéde zěnmeyàng?

What do you think about it?

Listen: 你觉得怎么样？

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你觉得怎么样？ opens with nǐ before the rising jué, so nǐ keeps its full dip. Then de fades, zěn dips, me fades again, and yàng falls. That gives two toneless syllables in a six-syllable question, and the pitch pattern is low, up, nothing, low, nothing, down — a sentence with real texture rather than an even march.

Where English speakers slip

The -üe final is where this comes apart. Learners produce "jway" with a plain w-glide, missing the front rounded vowel, or "joo-eh" in two beats. Set the tongue for "ee", round the lips, and then open to "eh" in one movement. The other error is a full tone on de, which turns a fluid verb into a stilted compound.