LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "便宜" in Chinese?
pyen-yi: a rising first syllable with a strong puff of air, then a weak toneless second. Note the character 便 is read pián here, not biàn.
piányi
The second syllable has gone neutral, giving a rise-then-nothing shape. That reduction is not optional in conversation — pián yí with two full tones sounds like a reading exercise. There is also a reading trap: 便 is pronounced biàn in words like 方便 fāngbiàn, so the same character carries two entirely different pronunciations.
Listen: 便宜
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
这个很便宜。
Zhège hěn piányi.
This one is cheap.
Listen: 这个很便宜。
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这个很便宜。 keeps hěn at a full dip before the rising pián — no sandhi, since pián does not dip. Then yi fades at the high pitch. So the sentence drops, fades, sinks to the floor, climbs to the top, and expires. The interval between hěn at the bottom and pián at the top is the largest movement in it.
Where English speakers slip
Reading the character as biàn is the specific trap here, and it produces a word that means convenient rather than cheap. On the sounds, under-aspirating the p gives biàn anyway by a different route. And the -ian final routinely opens out to "pyahn" when it should be a tight "eh" — a mistake that is especially audible because the syllable carries the word's only tone.