Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "六" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 六 in Chinese?

六 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ljoʊ˥˩/. It means “six.” lyo, said as one quick beat with a sharp falling pitch. Pinyin writes it liu, but the vowel in the middle is real and needs to be heard.

lyo, said as one quick beat with a sharp falling pitch. Pinyin writes it liu, but the vowel in the middle is real and needs to be heard.

六 /ljoʊ˥˩/

liù

A lone fourth tone with no sandhi. What it does trigger, though, is a change in others: because 六 is falling, a preceding 一 becomes rising, and 不 before it would also switch to a second tone. So the number is more often a cause of sandhi than a subject of it.

Listen: 六

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Sound it out

l- An English-style l, tongue tip on the ridge — but keep it light and forward, not the dark, hollow l English uses at the ends of words.

-iu A contracted spelling of -iou. The syllable glides from "ee" through a mid "oh" and finishes rounded, so it is genuinely three positions squeezed into one beat rather than a simple "ee-oo".

liù (falling) High to low in a single decisive sweep, compressed onto that fast-moving vowel. The fall and the glide happen simultaneously, which is what makes the syllable feel so brisk.

Hear it in a sentence

我六点回来。

Wǒ liù diǎn huílái.

I'll be back at six.

Listen: 我六点回来。

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我六点回来。 gives the low wǒ, then liù falling, then diǎn dipping — a fall immediately followed by a dip, which are easy to confuse if the fourth tone is not decisive enough. Wǒ stays low here because liù is not a third tone. The sentence closes on huílái, two rising tones in a row, lifting the whole thing at the end.

Where English speakers slip

The frequent English rendering is "lee-oo" with two syllables, or "loo" with the middle collapsed away. Both miss it: the syllable is one beat containing a moving vowel. Learners also tend to use a dark, velarised l — the sound at the end of "full" — where Mandarin wants a bright forward one, which noticeably thickens the whole word.