Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "旁边" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 旁边 in Chinese?

旁边 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /pʰɑŋ˧˥.pjɛn/. It means “next to / beside.” pahng-byen: a rising first syllable with a strong puff of air, then a weak toneless suffix.

pahng-byen: a rising first syllable with a strong puff of air, then a weak toneless suffix.

旁边 /pʰɑŋ˧˥.pjɛn/

pángbiān

Rising then nothing, giving a strong-weak shape. The word is also a compact aspiration drill: páng has a strong puff and bian has none, and the two labials sit right next to each other. If both syllables feel the same at the lips, one of them is wrong.

Listen: 旁边

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Sound it out

páng The lips release with a genuine gust of breath, onto a wide open "ah" sealed at the back of the mouth by ng. The tone lifts from mid to high across it.

bian Now an unaspirated b — no breath at all — onto the -ian final, closer to "yen" than "yahn". Toneless as a location suffix, so it is short, light and pitched wherever páng finished.

Hear it in a sentence

我家在公园旁边。

Wǒ jiā zài gōngyuán pángbiān.

My home is next to the park.

Listen: 我家在公园旁边。

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我家在公园旁边。 keeps wǒ at a full dip because jiā is level. Then zài falls, gōng holds high, yuán climbs, páng climbs again, and bian fades. Two consecutive rises on yuán and páng need separate resets, and the sentence ends on a weightless syllable riding high — so it finishes up rather than down.

Where English speakers slip

The aspiration contrast is the specific thing to nail: learners either aspirate both labials or neither, and both errors blur the word. Beyond that, the back nasal on páng drifts forward to pán, and bian gets restored to a full first tone, giving two heavy beats where the second should be almost inaudible.