Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "什么" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 什么 in Chinese?

什么 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʂən˧˥.mɤ/. It means “what.” shun-muh, with the first syllable rising and the second going slack. The sh is retroflex, and the ending of the first syllable is a front n.

shun-muh, with the first syllable rising and the second going slack. The sh is retroflex, and the ending of the first syllable is a front n.

什么 /ʂən˧˥.mɤ/

shénme

A rising tone plus a neutral one, with no sandhi possible — second tones are stable and neutral syllables have nothing to change. The interesting effect is that because shén ends high and me copies that height, the whole word finishes high, which can make it sound like a question even when it is not.

Listen: 什么

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Sound it out

shén Curled-back retroflex hiss into a short central vowel, closed by a front n with the tongue tip at the ridge. The pitch climbs from mid to high across a fairly short syllable, so the rise has to be brisk.

me Toneless and reduced, a quick m onto a schwa. It sits at the top of the pitch where shén left it, then simply stops. Roughly half the length of the first syllable.

Hear it in a sentence

你想做什么？

Nǐ xiǎng zuò shénme?

What do you want to do?

Listen: 你想做什么？

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你想做什么？ opens with nǐ xiǎng, two adjacent third tones, so nǐ rises. Then zuò falls, shén climbs back up, and me trails off. The sentence therefore has two separate rises, and no interrogative rise at the end — the question is carried entirely by the word 什么 itself.

Where English speakers slip

In fast speech natives often reduce this to something like "shemme", and learners who have heard that try to reproduce the reduction before they can produce the full form, ending up with an unrecognisable blur. Learn shén me clearly first. The other standard error is the initial: an English "sh" with a flat tongue drifts toward Mandarin's x, so curl the tip back and let the sound go hollow.