Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "说" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 说 in Chinese?

说 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʂwo˥/. It means “to speak / to say.” shwor, held high and flat. A retroflex sh followed by a rounded glide, all in one level beat.

shwor, held high and flat. A retroflex sh followed by a rounded glide, all in one level beat.

说 /ʂwo˥/

shuō

The pitch stays put. Its usefulness in sentences is as a stabiliser: because it is level, any third tone before it — huì shuō is a common one, though huì is falling — is unaffected. And in the frequent phrase wǒ shuō, the pronoun keeps its full low dip.

Listen: 说

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Sound it out

sh- The tip rides up and back toward the front of the hard palate, giving the hiss a dark hollow quality that English "sh" lacks.

-uo Lips round for "oo" and then open toward "aw". Coming straight out of a retroflex hiss, the lip-rounding has to start almost simultaneously with the consonant.

shuō (level) High and unmoving. Since the vowel is gliding while the pitch stays put, this is a good syllable for learning to separate mouth movement from pitch movement.

Hear it in a sentence

你会说中文吗？

Nǐ huì shuō Zhōngwén ma?

Do you speak Chinese?

Listen: 你会说中文吗？

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你会说中文吗？ has nǐ before huì, a fourth tone, so nǐ keeps its dip. Then shuō and Zhōng are two high level syllables in a row, which is a sustained plateau at the top of your range, before wén rises and ma trails off. Holding that double-high stretch without letting it sag is the technical challenge of the sentence.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers say "shwaw" with a flat tongue and an open unrounded finish, missing both the retroflexion and the rounded onset. Curl the tongue back first, then round the lips. The tone is the other risk: a first tone on a syllable that ends in an open vowel tends to taper off in English mouths, which reads as a fourth tone and turns this into a different word.