Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "门" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 门 in Chinese?

门 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /mən˧˥/. It means “door.” mun, climbing from mid to high. Ordinary m, a short central vowel, and a front n.

mun, climbing from mid to high. Ordinary m, a short central vowel, and a front n.

门 /mən˧˥/

mén

The upward contour is stable in all environments. Its useful contrast is with 们 men, the plural suffix, which has the identical segments and no tone at all — so the same syllable is a full second tone in one role and completely weightless in another, and only the grammar tells you which.

Listen: 门

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Sound it out

m- Lips closed, air through the nose — identical to English and needing no adjustment.

-en A short central vowel, close to the one in English "taken", closed with the tongue tip at the ridge. The tongue barely travels: it drops for the vowel and returns.

mén (rising) From the middle of your range it arrives high. On a short syllable the ascent has to be brisk, and the nasal ending gives it somewhere to land.

Hear it in a sentence

请关门。

Qǐng guān mén.

Close the door, please.

Listen: 请关门。

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请关门。 keeps qǐng at a full dip because guān is level. Then guān holds high and mén climbs from there. As with all second tones after a first, the climb is compressed and native speakers dip slightly before ascending — so the sentence goes low, high, and then up again from just below that height.

Where English speakers slip

The nasal drifts back to méng, which is a different syllable, and English ears do not flag it. Finish with the tongue tip on the ridge. The rise is the other issue: because the word often ends a short imperative, learners let the pitch fall as English does, and a falling mèn is a different word meaning stuffy or bored.