Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "问" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 问 in Chinese?

问 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /wən˥˩/. It means “to ask.” wun, dropping hard from high to low. Lips round to start, a short central vowel, and a front n to finish.

wun, dropping hard from high to low. Lips round to start, a short central vowel, and a front n to finish.

问 /wən˥˩/

wèn

Nothing changes the fall, though it changes what precedes it: 不问 becomes bú wèn. The relevant contrast to keep in mind is 问 wèn against 闻 wén and 文 wén, which differ only in tone — a falling delivery is the only thing marking this as the verb "to ask".

Listen: 问

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Sound it out

w- Lip-rounding as the syllable begins, exactly as in English "won". This is a real glide, not just decoration on the vowel.

-en A short central vowel — close to the sound in "taken" — closed with the tongue tip at the ridge. Fully spelled the final would be -uen, and that hidden central vowel is what keeps the syllable from collapsing into a plain "wun".

wèn (falling) Steep and quick from high to low. The syllable is short, so the descent has to be compressed and unambiguous.

Hear it in a sentence

我可以问你一件事吗？

Wǒ kěyǐ wèn nǐ yí jiàn shì ma?

Can I ask you something?

Listen: 我可以问你一件事吗？

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我可以问你一件事吗？ opens with wǒ kěyǐ, three consecutive third tones, so wǒ and kě both rise and only yǐ keeps the dip. Then wèn falls, nǐ dips, and yí is 一 converted to a rising tone before the falling jiàn. The sentence has two separate sandhi phenomena in eight syllables, which is fairly typical for Mandarin.

Where English speakers slip

Learners frequently drop the lip-rounding and produce "un", or over-round it into "woon". The lips round briefly and then relax into the central vowel. The nasal is the other issue — wèng with a back nasal is a different syllable, and since the vowel is short and central, the ending is doing a lot of the identifying work.