How to Pronounce '你好': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 你好 in Chinese?

你好 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ni˨˩˦.xɑʊ˨˩˦/. It means “hello / hi.” nee-HOW — but the pitch carries the real information. Two third tones collide, so the first one flips upward and what you actually say is ní hǎo.

How do you pronounce "你好" in Chinese?

nee-HOW — but the pitch carries the real information. Two third tones collide, so the first one flips upward and what you actually say is ní hǎo.

你好 /ni˨˩˦.xɑʊ˨˩˦/

nǐ hǎo

Both syllables are written with the third-tone hook, and that is precisely the sequence Mandarin refuses to pronounce as spelled. When one third tone runs into another, the first is replaced by a second tone: nǐ hǎo leaves a native mouth as ní hǎo, a rising syllable followed by a low dipping one. Pinyin never updates the accent marks to show this — the change is expected to happen automatically in your mouth.

Listen: 你好

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Sound it out

nǐ An ordinary English "n" onto the vowel of "see". On its own this syllable would sag to the bottom of your range, but in this particular pairing it does not stay there — see the tone note.

h- Rougher than an English "h". The back of the tongue rises toward the soft palate and the air scrapes past it, closer to the ch of Scottish "loch" than to the breathy h of "hello".

-ǎo A glide, not a single vowel: it opens on "ah" and travels toward "oo", and while that happens the pitch sinks to the floor of your voice before easing back up.

Hear it in a sentence

你好，我叫李明。

Nǐ hǎo, wǒ jiào Lǐ Míng.

Hello, my name is Li Ming.

Listen: 你好，我叫李明。

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你好，我叫李明。 hands you two separate tone environments split by the comma. Nǐ hǎo takes the rise-then-dip treatment; then jiào drops off a cliff; then Lǐ Míng puts a low third tone against a rising second, and because Míng is not a third tone, Lǐ simply stays low and nothing shifts. That pause after hǎo is what keeps Lǐ out of a second sandhi.

Where English speakers slip

The near-universal beginner version is "NEE-how", both syllables bright and high, with the bouncing melody of an English greeting. That erases the sandhi and turns the phrase into a cheer. Let ní climb from mid to high the way the end of a question does, then let hǎo drop to the very bottom of your comfortable range. Separately, resist making the h a soft English puff — Mandarin's is a scrape produced much further back in the mouth.