LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "可爱" in Chinese?
kuh-AI: a low sagging first syllable with a strongly aspirated k, then a falling second that is a bare vowel. The apostrophe in the pinyin marks where one syllable ends.
kě'ài
Dip then plunge, and no rule fires — the second syllable falls rather than dips, so kě keeps its full low contour. That is worth comparing with 可以, where the same first syllable does convert to a rising tone because yǐ dips. Same character, opposite behaviour, decided entirely by the neighbour.
Listen: 可爱
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
这只猫很可爱。
Zhè zhī māo hěn kě'ài.
This cat is very cute.
Listen: 这只猫很可爱。
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这只猫很可爱。 keeps hěn at a full dip, because the syllable after it is kě — and although kě is written with a dipping hook, hěn and kě are adjacent third tones, so hěn rises. The sentence therefore has a sandhi that is easy to miss because it crosses a word boundary: hén kě'ài.
Where English speakers slip
Under-aspirating the k gives gě. Push the air out audibly. The vowel in kě is routinely fronted to "eh", when the tongue should pull back toward a grunt-like quality. And the apostrophe confuses learners into inserting a pause or a glottal stop that is heavier than intended — the two syllables run together smoothly, the mark is just a reading aid.