LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "票" in Chinese?
pyao with a strong puff of air, dropping hard. One beat: an aspirated p, an "ee" glide, a wide open "ah", and a rounded finish.
piào
The drop is fixed and it flips the negator to bú. Its unaspirated partner is 表 biǎo, a dipping tone, so this syllable differs from the word for watch in both breath and pitch direction — two features at once, which at least makes them easier to keep apart than a single-feature pair.
Listen: 票
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
我买了音乐会的票。
Wǒ mǎile yīnyuèhuì de piào.
I bought the ticket for the concert.
Listen: 我买了音乐会的票。
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
我买了音乐会的票。 opens with wǒ and mǎi adjacent, both dipping, so wǒ rises. Then le fades, yīn holds level, yuè plunges, huì plunges again, de fades, and piào plunges a third time. Three descents in the second half, each needing its own reset to the top.
Where English speakers slip
Under-aspirating gives biào. Push the air out audibly. The glide is the other issue: shortened to "pyao" without the open middle, it robs the fourth tone of the space it needs to descend. Say the syllable slowly and feel the mouth travel through all three positions before speeding it up.