Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "是" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 是 in Chinese?

是 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʂʐ̩˥˩/. It means “to be (am / is / are).” Not "she" and not "shr" exactly. Curl the tongue tip back, hiss, and let the vowel be little more than a buzz held in that same position — then drop the pitch sharply.

Not "she" and not "shr" exactly. Curl the tongue tip back, hiss, and let the vowel be little more than a buzz held in that same position — then drop the pitch sharply.

是 /ʂʐ̩˥˩/

shì

One syllable, one tone, no sandhi. What deserves attention instead is how often 是 loses weight in running speech: as a linking verb it is frequently spoken quickly and lightly, though unlike a true neutral-tone particle it never abandons the falling contour outright — it just gets compressed.

Listen: 是

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Sound it out

sh- The retroflex hiss: tongue tip curled up and back so it points at the ridge behind the hard palate, with a hollow, dark quality English "sh" never has.

-i A decoy spelling. After sh, the letter i is not the vowel of "see" — the tongue simply stays where the hiss left it and vibrates, giving a buzzy syllabic sound with no separate vowel gesture at all.

shì (falling) The pitch starts high and drops fast and hard, like the second half of a decisive "NO." Short, clipped, over quickly.

Hear it in a sentence

我是学生。

Wǒ shì xuésheng.

I am a student.

Listen: 我是学生。

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我是学生。 sets a low third tone (wǒ), a sharp fall (shì) and a rise (xué) side by side in three beats, which is a useful pitch drill in itself. Because xué is a second tone, wǒ before it stays low; and shì falling into a rising syllable creates a distinct V-shape across the middle of the sentence.

Where English speakers slip

Two errors travel together here. The first is pronouncing it "she", using the English vowel and a flat English "sh" — that is a different Mandarin syllable entirely. The second is letting the fourth tone become a level mid pitch, which is what English does to short function words. Say it as though you were closing an argument: high, then straight down.