LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "请问" in Chinese?
ching-WUN: a low sagging first syllable with a strong puff of air and a back nasal, then a hard-falling second.
qǐngwèn
Low first, then a drop from the top, with no conversion inside — wèn falls rather than dips, so qǐng keeps its full low contour. That is worth contrasting with qǐng gěi or qǐng zuò: in the first, gěi dips and forces qǐng upward; in the second, zuò falls and qǐng stays low. The same polite verb behaves differently depending on the request.
Listen: 请问
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
请问，怎么去火车站？
Qǐngwèn, zěnme qù huǒchēzhàn?
Excuse me, how do I get to the train station?
Listen: 请问，怎么去火车站？
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请问，怎么去火车站？ has qǐng keeping its dip, then after the comma zěn dips too, me fades, qù falls, huǒ dips, chē holds high, and zhàn falls. Notice that huǒ is followed by the level chē, so no conversion occurs there — three separate dipping tones in the sentence and not one of them changes.
Where English speakers slip
The nasal on qǐng drifts forward to qǐn, which is a different syllable, and English ears will not flag it. Close at the back with the tongue tip down. On the second syllable, learners either drop the lip-rounding entirely or over-round it into "woon". And the q gets produced as an English "ch" with the tongue too far back and the lips rounded — spread them instead.