Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "热" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 热 in Chinese?

热 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɻɤ˥˩/. It means “hot / warm.” ruh, dropping hard, with a retroflex buzz and completely unrounded lips. The whole syllable is made at the back and centre of the mouth.

ruh, dropping hard, with a retroflex buzz and completely unrounded lips. The whole syllable is made at the back and centre of the mouth.

热 /ɻɤ˥˩/

rè

The drop is not negotiable, and it changes the negator: 不热 becomes bú rè. In the very common hěn rè, the adverb keeps its full dip because 热 falls rather than dips — worth rehearsing, because weather sentences of this shape come up constantly and learners tend to blur the two contours.

Listen: 热

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Sound it out

r- The voiced partner of the retroflex sh: tongue tip curled up and back, buzzing. English speakers round their lips for r almost involuntarily, and here the lips must stay flat.

-è Mandarin's e in full: unrounded, tongue retracted and slightly raised. Following a retroflex consonant, the tongue barely has to move — both sounds live in roughly the same region.

the fall A steep, decisive drop. There is no glide to spread the movement over, so it happens fast and must be complete.

Hear it in a sentence

今天很热。

Jīntiān hěn rè.

It's very hot today.

Listen: 今天很热。

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今天很热。 is four syllables with a very clean profile: jīn and tiān both hold high, hěn sinks to the floor, and rè leaps back to the top and plunges. That leap out of the low hěn is the moment learners flatten, which turns the whole sentence into a gradual downward drift instead of a plateau, a trough and a spike.

Where English speakers slip

This is where English habits do the most damage — the lips round, the tongue bunches, and the result sounds like the start of "rug". Unround completely and curl the tip. The vowel is the second half: substituting a schwa or "eh" pulls it forward when it should be retracted. Together these two errors make the word nearly unrecognisable even with a perfect tone.