How to Pronounce '上': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 上 in Chinese?

上 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʂɑŋ˥˩/. It means “on / on top of.” shahng with the tongue curled back, dropping hard from high to low. Wide open vowel, back nasal ending.

How do you pronounce "上" in Chinese?

shahng with the tongue curled back, dropping hard from high to low. Wide open vowel, back nasal ending.

上 /ʂɑŋ˥˩/

shàng

The tone depends on the job: falling when it means "on" or "to go up", but toneless in 早上 zǎoshang and 晚上 wǎnshang, where the character has become a weak suffix. That split is worth memorising as two separate facts rather than one rule, because the tonal difference is what tells a listener which sense you mean.

Listen: 上

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Sound it out

sh- Retroflex: the tip of the tongue curls up and back so it aims at the front of the hard palate, leaving a hollow underneath that darkens the hiss.

-ang A genuinely open "ah" with the jaw dropped, sealed at the back of the mouth by ng. The tongue tip, having been curled up for the sh, must come all the way down and stay down.

shàng (falling) High to low in one fast sweep. The long vowel means the descent is audible rather than clipped, which makes this a comfortable word for practising the fourth tone.

Hear it in a sentence

书在桌子上。

Shū zài zhuōzi shàng.

The book is on the table.

Listen: 书在桌子上。

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书在桌子上。 ends on shàng, so the fourth tone gets its full descent with nothing after it to cut it short. Before that, zhuōzi is high plus toneless, and zài already fell once — so the sentence contains two drops with a flat stretch between them. The retroflex initials in shū, zhuō and shàng also make this a natural tongue-curling drill.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers use the "sh" of "shop", tongue flat, which is the palatal-ish sound Mandarin reserves for x. Curl the tip back until the syllable sounds slightly hollow. The nasal is the second problem: shàn with a front n is a different syllable, and the merger happens silently because English treats the two nasals as interchangeable before a pause.