Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "咖啡" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 咖啡 in Chinese?

咖啡 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kʰa˥.feɪ˥/. It means “coffee.” kah-FAY, both syllables high and flat. A borrowed word, but the tones are entirely Mandarin — two level plateaus in a row.

kah-FAY, both syllables high and flat. A borrowed word, but the tones are entirely Mandarin — two level plateaus in a row.

咖啡 /kʰa˥.feɪ˥/

kāfēi

Two level tones back to back, which makes this a good calibration word: if the second syllable sits lower than the first, your first tone is sagging. Because the loan comes from a European language, learners expect English stress on one syllable — Mandarin gives both equal height and roughly equal length.

Listen: 咖啡

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Sound it out

kā Aspirated k with a real gust of breath, onto a broad open "ah" with the jaw down. Pinned at the top of the range.

fēi Upper teeth on lower lip, then a tight diphthong from "eh" to "ee". Also level and high, so the word never moves in pitch at all.

Hear it in a sentence

我早上喝咖啡。

Wǒ zǎoshang hē kāfēi.

I have coffee in the morning.

Listen: 我早上喝咖啡。

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我早上喝咖啡。 opens with wǒ and zǎo adjacent, both dipping, so wǒ rises. Then shang fades, hē holds level, and kāfēi adds two more level syllables — so the sentence ends with a three-syllable plateau at the top of the range. Sustaining that without drifting downward is the whole difficulty.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers import the stress pattern of "coffee", hitting the first syllable hard and letting the second fall away. That turns fēi into something closer to a fourth tone. Give both syllables the same height. Under-aspirating the k gives gā, and the vowel in kā is often tightened to the a of "cat" instead of opening properly.