How to Pronounce '四': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 四 in Chinese?

四 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /sz̩˥˩/. It means “four.” Not "see" and not "suh". Hold an s and let it buzz into a vowel that never leaves the s position — then drop the pitch sharply.

How do you pronounce "四" in Chinese?

Not "see" and not "suh". Hold an s and let it buzz into a vowel that never leaves the s position — then drop the pitch sharply.

四 /sz̩˥˩/

sì

A single fourth tone with nothing to negotiate — no sandhi applies. Its practical difficulty is contrastive rather than combinatorial: 四 sì and 十 shí differ by both tone and tongue position, and in numbers like fourteen and forty they sit right next to each other, so precision matters more here than in most words.

Listen: 四

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Sound it out

s- Tongue tip at the teeth for a clean, thin hiss, with no lip-rounding and no retroflexion.

-i The third of pinyin's decoy i spellings. After s, the tongue stays exactly where the hiss put it and voicing begins, producing a buzzy syllabic sound. There is no "ee" vowel and no schwa.

sì (falling) From high straight down, fast. Since the syllable has almost no vowel body to carry the movement, the fall has to be compressed into a very short space.

Hear it in a sentence

这里有四把椅子。

Zhèlǐ yǒu sì bǎ yǐzi.

There are four chairs here.

Listen: 这里有四把椅子。

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这里有四把椅子。 puts sì between yǒu and bǎ, both third tones. Yǒu is preceded by zhèlǐ, whose second syllable is also third, so lǐ rises before yǒu. Then sì falls, bǎ dips, and yǐzi dips and goes toneless. The number therefore arrives as the one sharp drop in a sentence otherwise full of low pitches, which is exactly what makes it stand out.

Where English speakers slip

The dominant error is saying "see", which not only imports a wrong vowel but relocates the tongue to a palatal position and edges the word toward xì. Keep the hiss where it is and simply turn on your voice. A second recurring problem is the tone: because the syllable is so short, learners let it come out level, and a level 四 can be misheard as a completely different word.