LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "少" in Chinese?
shao with the tongue curled back, low and sagging. Retroflex hiss into a long glide from "ah" toward "oo".
shǎo
The character has a second reading, shào with a falling tone, meaning young — as in 少年. So the same written form is two words distinguished only by pitch direction, which means reading aloud requires knowing which one you are looking at before you open your mouth.
Listen: 少
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
我的时间很少。
Wǒ de shíjiān hěn shǎo.
I have little time.
Listen: 我的时间很少。
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
我的时间很少。 ends on shǎo, and hěn immediately precedes it. Two adjacent third tones, so hěn rises and shǎo keeps the full dip with room for its final lift: hén shǎo. Earlier, wǒ is protected by the toneless de and keeps its own dip. Three written third tones, one conversion.
Where English speakers slip
English "sh" with a flat tongue is the standard substitution, which pulls the word toward the palatal xiǎo — a different and very common word. Curl the tip back. The tone is the second concern: a falling delivery turns "few" into the other reading of the character, and since both are legitimate words, the error produces confusion rather than mere accent.