Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "开" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 开 in Chinese?

开 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kʰaɪ˥/. It means “to open.” kai with a strong puff of air, held high and flat. Rhymes with "eye", and the aspiration is not optional.

kai with a strong puff of air, held high and flat. Rhymes with "eye", and the aspiration is not optional.

开 /kʰaɪ˥/

kāi

Nothing moves this pitch. It appears in a lot of two-syllable compounds — kāimén, kāishǐ, kāichē — where its high level pitch serves as a starting plateau that the second syllable moves away from. That makes 开 a useful reference point for calibrating where the top of your range sits.

Listen: 开

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Sound it out

k- The back of the tongue releases from the soft palate and a genuine gust of breath follows. Mandarin aspirates more forcefully than English, so push more air than feels necessary.

-ai The diphthong of "eye": wide open on "ah", closing toward "ee". The open starting position gives the level tone plenty of body.

kāi (level) High and steady through the whole diphthong. The mouth is moving while the pitch is not, and keeping those independent is the small technical trick here.

Hear it in a sentence

请开门。

Qǐng kāi mén.

Open the door, please.

Listen: 请开门。

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请开门。 keeps qǐng at a full third tone, since kāi is level and no sandhi applies. Then kāi holds high and mén rises. So the sentence goes low, high, higher — a steady climb, which is unusual for Mandarin and gives this polite request a distinctly open, rising feel.

Where English speakers slip

Under-aspirating gives gāi, a different word. Hold a hand in front of your mouth and check you feel the air. The tone is the second concern: level tones tend to taper in English mouths, especially on a diphthong that closes upward, and a tapering kāi reads as a fourth tone. Sustain the pitch and then cut it off.