How to Pronounce '水': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 水 in Chinese?

水 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʂweɪ˨˩˦/. It means “water.” shway, with a retroflex sh and a low dipping pitch. The tongue curls back for the hiss and then has to travel a long way forward for the vowel.

How do you pronounce "水" in Chinese?

shway, with a retroflex sh and a low dipping pitch. The tongue curls back for the hiss and then has to travel a long way forward for the vowel.

水 /ʂweɪ˨˩˦/

shuǐ

One syllable with a third tone, so the sandhi question is entirely about what follows. Shuǐ guǒ, shuǐ jiǎo and similar third-third compounds push it up to a rising tone; before anything else it keeps the low dip. Alone, as in a request for water, it gets the full dipping contour.

Listen: 水

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Sound it out

sh- Tongue tip curled up and back toward the front of the hard palate, leaving a hollow space underneath. That cavity is what gives the sound its dark, muffled quality compared with English "sh".

-ui Spelled with two letters but containing three: a rounded w-glide, a short "eh", and a close finish at "ee". Fully written out it is -uei, and hearing that middle vowel is what separates a good shuǐ from a rushed one.

shuǐ (low) The pitch descends to the bottom of the range across that whole glide, which takes real breath control — you are moving the tongue and dropping the pitch at once.

Hear it in a sentence

我想要一杯水。

Wǒ xiǎng yào yì bēi shuǐ.

I would like a glass of water.

Listen: 我想要一杯水。

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我想要一杯水。 finishes on shuǐ, which is where the third tone can be at its fullest — nothing follows, so the pitch dips and curls up. Earlier in the sentence, wǒ xiǎng puts two third tones together and wǒ rises accordingly. And yì bēi shows 一 already converted to a falling tone ahead of the first-tone bēi.

Where English speakers slip

The standard error is a flat English "shway" with the tongue tip down and the whole syllable said at one pitch. Curl the tongue back until the sound feels slightly muffled, then let the pitch drop. Learners also frequently drop the middle vowel and produce "shwee", which loses the characteristic three-part glide and makes the syllable sound thin.