How to Pronounce '请': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 请 in Chinese?

请 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tɕʰiŋ˨˩˦/. It means “please.” ching, with a real puff of air after the ch, an "ee" vowel, and a back nasal ending. The pitch dips low and stays there.

How do you pronounce "请" in Chinese?

ching, with a real puff of air after the ch, an "ee" vowel, and a back nasal ending. The pitch dips low and stays there.

请 /tɕʰiŋ˨˩˦/

qǐng

One syllable, and no sandhi in the citation form — but 请 is a magnet for it, because it so often introduces a request. Put it before another third tone, as in qǐng gěi, and it converts to a rising second tone. Before any other tone, such as qǐng zuò or qǐng jìn, it stays low.

Listen: 请

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Sound it out

q- Not the q of English. Spread your lips as if smiling, press the front of the tongue broadly against the hard palate, release with a strong breath. It is the aspirated partner of j, and the aspiration is what distinguishes them.

-ing An "ee" vowel closed off by ng — the nasal of "sing", made at the back of the mouth with the tongue tip nowhere near the teeth. Many speakers add a faint schwa glide between the two.

qǐng (low) The pitch drops toward the bottom of your range and sits, rather than dipping and bouncing. Because this word almost always precedes another word, the full curl-up rarely surfaces.

Hear it in a sentence

请给我一杯咖啡。

Qǐng gěi wǒ yì bēi kāfēi.

A coffee, please.

Listen: 请给我一杯咖啡。

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请给我一杯咖啡。 stacks three third tones at the start: qǐng gěi wǒ. Mandarin resolves a run like this from the right, so gěi and qǐng both rise and only wǒ keeps the low dip — roughly qíng géi wǒ. Then yì bēi is a reminder that 一 has already shifted to a fourth tone before the first-tone bēi.

Where English speakers slip

The dominant error is pronouncing q as English "kw" or as a plain "ch", both of which miss the target. Aim for the tongue position of "cheese" but flatter and further forward, with breath. The nasal ending causes separate trouble: English speakers routinely say qǐn with a front n, which collides with a different syllable. Keep the tongue tip down and let the back of the tongue close the sound.