Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "您" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 您 in Chinese?

您 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /nin˧˥/. It means “you (polite).” neen, rising from mid to high like the end of an English question. Note the front n at both ends — nothing about this syllable happens at the back of the mouth.

neen, rising from mid to high like the end of an English question. Note the front n at both ends — nothing about this syllable happens at the back of the mouth.

您 /nin˧˥/

nín

A single second-tone syllable, and second tones never undergo sandhi in Mandarin — they are stable in every environment. That makes 您 unusually low-maintenance next to its informal counterpart 你, which flips whenever a third tone follows it.

Listen: 您

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Sound it out

n- Ordinary alveolar n, tongue tip on the ridge behind the teeth.

-in An "ee" vowel closed with the same front n you started with. The tongue barely travels: it drops for the vowel and comes straight back up. Distinct from -ing, where the closure happens at the back.

nín (rising) Pitch climbs steadily from around the middle of your range to the top, the contour English uses for a surprised "huh?" or for the second half of "really?"

Hear it in a sentence

您要什么？

Nín yào shénme?

What would you like?

Listen: 您要什么？

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您要什么？ moves from a rising nín to a falling yào and then to shénme, whose second syllable is toneless. So the pitch climbs, drops, climbs again on shén, and simply expires on me. The absence of any rise at the end is deliberate: the question word carries the interrogative force and the melody stays flat.

Where English speakers slip

Because the polite pronoun looks like 你 with something added, learners often carry over the low dipping tone and say nǐn. That is not a word. The rise must be audible. The other risk is the ending: producing níng with a back nasal creates a different syllable, and since English speakers rarely hear the -n / -ng contrast, it slips past unnoticed unless you deliberately monitor it.