Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "朋友" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 朋友 in Chinese?

朋友 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /pʰɤŋ˧˥.joʊ/. It means “friend.” pung-yo: a rising first syllable with a strong puff of air and a back nasal, then a weak toneless second.

pung-yo: a rising first syllable with a strong puff of air and a back nasal, then a weak toneless second.

朋友 /pʰɤŋ˧˥.joʊ/

péngyou

The upward movement is followed by a weightless tail. The neutralisation of 友 is worth noting because the same syllable is a full dipping tone as 有 yǒu, "to have" — so this word contains a syllable that would dip in isolation and is completely flat here. Neutral tone overrides the citation form entirely.

Listen: 朋友

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Sound it out

péng The lips release with a genuine gust of breath, onto a mid back unrounded vowel sealed at the back of the mouth by ng. The voice climbs from mid to high.

you Toneless: a y-glide onto a vowel that starts fairly unrounded and closes toward "oo". Short and light, sitting at the high pitch péng finished on.

Hear it in a sentence

他是我最好的朋友。

Tā shì wǒ zuì hǎo de péngyou.

He is my best friend.

Listen: 他是我最好的朋友。

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他是我最好的朋友。 keeps hǎo at a full dip because de is toneless — no conversion, even though hǎo dips and there are other dipping tones nearby. Then péng climbs and you fades. The sentence has two toneless syllables, de and you, and they are what keep the rhythm loose rather than marched.

Where English speakers slip

Without a real puff, the p gives béng. The -eng vowel is the other issue: an English "eng" as in "length" is too front, and Mandarin wants the tongue pulled back. And learners restore a dipping tone to you by analogy with 有, producing péng yǒu with two full tones — it should be light enough to be almost inaudible.