Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "拿" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 拿 in Chinese?

拿 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /na˧˥/. It means “to take / to hold.” nah, rising from mid to high. Ordinary n, wide open vowel, and a climb that needs to be clearly audible on a short syllable.

nah, rising from mid to high. Ordinary n, wide open vowel, and a climb that needs to be clearly audible on a short syllable.

拿 /na˧˥/

ná

The rise never shifts. Its neighbours are where the action is: 拿 is a near-minimal contrast with 那 nà, "that", which differs only by having a falling tone instead of a rising one. Same consonant, same vowel, opposite pitch direction.

Listen: 拿

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Sound it out

n- Alveolar n with the tongue tip on the ridge — no adjustment needed from English.

-á A broad open "ah" with the jaw dropped, held steady. The openness gives the tone room, which matters because there is no consonant ending to lean on.

ná (rising) Pitch climbs from around the middle of your range to the top. Since the syllable is a single open vowel, the rise is exposed and any hesitation shows.

Hear it in a sentence

请把这个拿走。

Qǐng bǎ zhège ná zǒu.

Please take this away.

Listen: 请把这个拿走。

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请把这个拿走。 opens with the qǐng bǎ sandhi — two adjacent third tones, so qǐng rises. Then zhè falls, ge is toneless, ná rises, and zǒu dips at the end. So there are two rises in the sentence and they have different sources: one is a sandhi conversion, the other is the word's own tone. Hearing them as the same shape is the point.

Where English speakers slip

The rise is often too shallow, and a level ná lands somewhere near nā, which is not a word — so it registers as unclear rather than wrong, which is arguably worse. Begin lower and climb further. The other frequent slip is the vowel: the flat a of "cat" is too front, and combined with a weak rise it makes the word hard to identify.