Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "十" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 十 in Chinese?

十 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʂʐ̩˧˥/. It means “ten.” A retroflex hiss with a buzzing non-vowel, rising from mid to high. Same syllable shape as 是 but with the pitch climbing instead of dropping.

A retroflex hiss with a buzzing non-vowel, rising from mid to high. Same syllable shape as 是 but with the pitch climbing instead of dropping.

十 /ʂʐ̩˧˥/

shí

Rising tones are the bedrock of the system — they never change: second tones are the most stable in the system. The important tonal fact around 十 is the company it keeps — sì and shí are near neighbours in every compound number, and only the tone and the tongue position tell them apart.

Listen: 十

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Sound it out

sh- Tongue tip curled back so it points toward the front of the hard palate. The hollow underneath gives the hiss a darker, deeper quality than English "sh".

-i Not a vowel in the ordinary sense. The tongue holds the retroflex posture and starts vibrating, so the syllable is essentially a voiced continuation of the hiss.

shí (rising) Pitch climbs from the middle of your range to the top, the contour of an English "huh?". Because the syllable is short, the rise has to be quick and unmistakable.

Hear it in a sentence

我们十点见。

Wǒmen shí diǎn jiàn.

Let's meet at ten.

Listen: 我们十点见。

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我们十点见。 runs wǒmen — a dip plus a toneless syllable — into the rising shí, then down to the dipping diǎn and out on the falling jiàn. So the pitch goes low, nothing, up, low, down. That rise on shí in the middle of an otherwise low-pitched sentence is the clearest possible cue that this is ten and not four.

Where English speakers slip

Two distinct problems. First, learners produce "she" with an English sh and an "ee" vowel, which sounds nothing like the target. Second, they flatten the rise, and a level shi is easily heard as shī — a different word. Curl the tongue, buzz rather than voweling, and make the pitch climb audibly across the short syllable.