Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "开始" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 开始 in Chinese?

开始 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kʰaɪ˥.ʂʐ̩˨˩˦/. It means “to start / to begin.” kai-SHRR: a high level first syllable with a strong puff of air, then a retroflex second syllable that sinks to the bottom.

kai-SHRR: a high level first syllable with a strong puff of air, then a retroflex second syllable that sinks to the bottom.

开始 /kʰaɪ˥.ʂʐ̩˨˩˦/

kāishǐ

A plateau followed by a plunge, with no rule in play. The tonal shape is a plateau followed by a plunge, and because the second syllable is short and vowelless, the entire descent has to happen in very little time. If the word sounds rushed, it is usually because the first syllable was not held long enough to establish the height the second falls from.

Listen: 开始

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Sound it out

kāi Aspirated k with real breath behind it, onto the wide diphthong of "eye", held at high pitch throughout.

shǐ Tongue curls back for the retroflex hiss and then voices in place — no separate vowel. The pitch drops from the high plateau kāi established all the way to the floor, which makes this one of the larger intervals in a two-syllable word.

Hear it in a sentence

电影八点开始。

Diànyǐng bā diǎn kāishǐ.

The movie starts at eight.

Listen: 电影八点开始。

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电影八点开始。 places the word at the end, so shǐ gets a full third tone with room for the final upturn. Ahead of it, diàn falls, yǐng dips, bā is level, and diǎn dips again. Note that yǐng and bā are not both third tones, so no sandhi fires there — the sentence has three separate third tones and none of them changes.

Where English speakers slip

It falls apart on the second syllable, usually as "shee" with a real vowel and a flat tongue. There is no "ee": curl back and buzz. Learners also under-aspirate the k, giving gāi, and level out the third tone on shǐ, so the word ends up sounding like two mid-pitched syllables with no shape at all.