LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "那里" in Chinese?
nah-LEE: a hard-falling first syllable, then a low sagging second. The mirror image of 这里 in meaning and identical in tone shape.
nàlǐ
Falling into dipping, with nothing to adjust. The point worth flagging is the contrast with 哪里 nǎlǐ, "where", which differs only in the tone of its first syllable — and which does undergo sandhi, because there two dipping tones meet. So 那里 and 哪里 sound different in two ways at once: the first tone, and whether the first syllable converts.
Listen: 那里
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
商店在那里。
Shāngdiàn zài nàlǐ.
The shop is over there.
Listen: 商店在那里。
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商店在那里。 places the word at the end, so lǐ gets its full dipping contour with the final lift. Before it, shāng holds high, diàn falls, zài falls again, and nà falls a third time. Three consecutive drops before the sentence finally sinks — a demanding sequence that English rhythm wants to merge into one slide.
Where English speakers slip
Levelling the first syllable turns "there" into "where" and simultaneously creates a sandhi environment where none belongs. Give nà a decisive plunge. The vowel is a smaller issue: the tight a of English "gnat" is too front, and the jaw needs to drop for a genuinely open "ah".