Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "鸟" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 鸟 in Chinese?

鸟 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /njɑʊ˨˩˦/. It means “bird.” nyao, low and sagging. One beat: an n, a quick "ee" glide, a wide open "ah", and a rounded finish.

nyao, low and sagging. One beat: an n, a quick "ee" glide, a wide open "ah", and a rounded finish.

鸟 /njɑʊ˨˩˦/

niǎo

The neighbour decides. It contrasts with 尿 niào, a falling tone with identical segments, so pitch direction is doing real work here. And because the word often begins a sentence as a subject, it frequently lands before another dipping syllable and converts.

Listen: 鸟

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Sound it out

n- Alveolar n with the tongue tip on the ridge, exactly as in English.

-iao Three positions in a single beat: "ee", a wide open "ah", then closing toward "oo". The open middle is the longest part and the one most often skipped.

niǎo (dip) The voice sinks to the floor across that long glide. Its length makes this a comfortable third tone to produce honestly rather than rushing.

Hear it in a sentence

鸟每天早上唱歌。

Niǎo měi tiān zǎoshang chànggē.

The bird sings every morning.

Listen: 鸟每天早上唱歌。

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鸟每天早上唱歌。 does exactly that: niǎo and měi are adjacent dipping tones, so niǎo rises. Then tiān holds level, zǎo dips, shang fades, chàng plunges, gē holds level. Note zǎo keeps its full descent because shang is toneless, so only one of the two conversions available actually fires.

Where English speakers slip

The glide gets split into "nee-ow" with two beats, doubling the length and blurring the tone. It is one beat with a continuously moving mouth. And the niǎo měi conversion at the start of the sentence is easy to overlook, because the two syllables belong to entirely different parts of the sentence.