Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "他" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 他 in Chinese?

他 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tʰa˥/. It means “he / him.” tah with a strong puff of air and a high, flat pitch. The aspiration is not optional — it is what separates this from 搭 dā.

tah with a strong puff of air and a high, flat pitch. The aspiration is not optional — it is what separates this from 搭 dā.

他 /tʰa˥/

tā

The high plateau is permanent. As a pronoun it is frequently spoken quickly, but unlike English "he" it does not reduce to a schwa or lose its pitch — Mandarin does not have that kind of vowel reduction for pronouns, so even a fast tā stays high and open.

Listen: 他

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Sound it out

t- Strongly aspirated: the tongue tip releases from the ridge and a real gust of breath follows before the vowel begins. Mandarin's t is more forcefully aspirated than the English t in "top".

-ā A wide open "ah" with the jaw dropped, held steady with no drift toward a diphthong.

tā (level) High and unwavering. With an open vowel and no consonant closure at the end, there is nothing to stop the pitch drifting, so it has to be held deliberately.

Hear it in a sentence

他是我哥哥。

Tā shì wǒ gēge.

He is my brother.

Listen: 他是我哥哥。

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他是我哥哥。 puts the high tā against the falling shì, then wǒ dips, then gēge gives a high syllable plus a toneless echo. Notice the reduplicated kinship term: the second 哥 loses its tone entirely, the same pattern as in 谢谢. So the sentence ends with a high plateau that simply fades out rather than resolving.

Where English speakers slip

Under-aspirating is the classic error, since English speakers reduce aspiration on unstressed function words and pronouns feel unstressed. Without the puff of air, tā drifts toward dā. Hold a hand in front of your mouth and make sure you feel it. The vowel also tends to shorten to the a of "cat"; open it out and let the syllable have some length.