Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "呢" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 呢 in Chinese?

呢 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /nɤ/. It means “(particle: and you? / what about).” nuh — quick, weak, toneless. It bounces a question back to the other person without any change in melody.

nuh — quick, weak, toneless. It bounces a question back to the other person without any change in melody.

呢 /nɤ/

Toneless in every use as a particle, and sentence-final, so it neither undergoes nor triggers sandhi. Its real prosodic job is to be lighter and shorter than everything around it — the particle carries the grammar precisely because it carries no weight.

Listen: 呢

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Sound it out

n- Ordinary alveolar n with the tongue tip at the ridge.

-e Reduced to a schwa because the syllable carries no tone. In stressed positions Mandarin's e is pulled back and up, but here it relaxes into the centre and shortens sharply.

no pitch No tone of its own. It sits at whatever level the preceding syllable ended on, which is why it can sound quite different depending on the sentence.

Hear it in a sentence

我很好，你呢？

Wǒ hěn hǎo, nǐ ne?

I'm fine, and you?

Listen: 我很好，你呢？

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我很好，你呢？ contains a textbook sandhi and then a trap. Hěn hǎo puts two third tones in contact, so hěn rises: hén hǎo. Then after the comma, nǐ is a full third tone and ne trails off it at the low pitch hǎo and nǐ left behind. The question mark tempts you to lift the ending — do not. The particle stays flat and low.

Where English speakers slip

The near-universal error is swooping upward on ne to signal a question, which is exactly what English intonation demands and exactly what Mandarin forbids. Keep the pitch where the previous syllable left it. A second, smaller error is reading the e as English "eh" and producing "neh"; it is a schwa, closer to the second syllable of "sofa".