Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "可以" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 可以 in Chinese?

可以 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kʰɤ˨˩˦.i˨˩˦/. It means “can / may (permission).” kuh-YEE, and the tone is not what the spelling says: two third tones collide, so the first rises and you actually say ké yǐ.

kuh-YEE, and the tone is not what the spelling says: two third tones collide, so the first rises and you actually say ké yǐ.

可以 /kʰɤ˨˩˦.i˨˩˦/

kěyǐ

A textbook third-tone sandhi. Both syllables carry the dipping hook in isolation, and Mandarin will not pronounce two of those in a row: the first converts to a rising second tone. So kěyǐ is spoken ké yǐ. The pinyin never updates to show this, which means you have to spot the pattern yourself every time you meet a word like this.

Listen: 可以

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Sound it out

kě An aspirated k with a real gust of breath, onto the back unrounded e — lips flat, tongue retracted. Written as a third tone but pronounced as a rise in this word.

yǐ A clean tense "ee" with a y-glide in front, and this is the syllable that keeps the low dip. Being second in the pair, it is the one that stays as written.

Hear it in a sentence

我可以坐这里吗？

Wǒ kěyǐ zuò zhèlǐ ma?

May I sit here?

Listen: 我可以坐这里吗？

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我可以坐这里吗？ compounds the problem, because wǒ is also a third tone. The run wǒ kě yǐ has three dipping tones in a row, and Mandarin resolves it by raising everything but the last: wó ké yǐ. Then zuò falls, zhèlǐ gives a fall and a dip, and ma is toneless. Nearly half the sentence is written with third tones and almost none of them are pronounced as one.

Where English speakers slip

Beginners produce two laborious dips, kě…yǐ, which is slow and immediately marks the accent. It should be a quick rise onto a low syllable. The aspiration on k is the other issue: without the puff it becomes gě, a different word. And the vowel in kě frequently comes out as "eh" — pull the tongue back so it sounds more like a grunt than a front vowel.