Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "来" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 来 in Chinese?

来 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /laɪ˧˥/. It means “to come.” lie, rising from mid to high. A bright forward l onto a wide diphthong, with the pitch climbing all the way through.

lie, rising from mid to high. A bright forward l onto a wide diphthong, with the pitch climbing all the way through.

来 /laɪ˧˥/

lái

The rise holds in every environment — second tones never change under sandhi. What does change around 来 is other words: it is a first-tone-free environment, so any third tone in front of it keeps its full dip. Wǒ lái, nǐ lái and qǐng lái all leave the preceding syllable untouched.

Listen: 来

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Sound it out

l- Tongue tip on the ridge, air over the sides, kept light and forward. The dark hollow l English uses before consonants would muddy this syllable.

-ai Open on "ah", closing toward "ee" — the diphthong of "eye", with a genuinely wide starting position.

lái (rising) Pitch climbs from mid to high, and the long diphthong gives it space to do so clearly. This is one of the easier second tones to hear because the vowel lasts long enough for the rise to develop.

Hear it in a sentence

你跟我们来吗？

Nǐ gēn wǒmen lái ma?

Are you coming with us?

Listen: 你跟我们来吗？

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你跟我们来吗？ has two third tones, nǐ and wǒ, separated by gēn, a first tone — so neither changes. Then men goes toneless, lái climbs, and ma trails off at that high pitch. Because lái ends high and the particle copies it, the question happens to finish on a high note, but that is a consequence of the tone, not an interrogative rise.

Where English speakers slip

The rise is often too small, since English speakers hear "lie" and produce a flat or falling English word. Start lower than feels natural so there is room to climb. The l is the other issue: a dark, velarised English l gives the vowel a hollow quality and pulls the whole syllable backward. Keep the tongue tip forward and the sound bright.