Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "问题" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 问题 in Chinese?

问题 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /wən˥˩.tʰi˧˥/. It means “problem / question.” wun-TEE: a hard-falling first syllable with lip-rounding, then a rising second with a strong puff of air.

wun-TEE: a hard-falling first syllable with lip-rounding, then a rising second with a strong puff of air.

问题 /wən˥˩.tʰi˧˥/

wèntí

A drop straight into a climb, which is one of the harder transitions in Mandarin: the voice must reach the bottom and then immediately begin ascending. Practising the word as a single V-shaped gesture rather than two separate tones is the quickest way to get it fluent.

Listen: 问题

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

wèn The lips round for the glide, then a short central vowel closed with the tongue tip at the ridge. The pitch plunges from high to low on a short syllable.

tí Aspirated t with a real gust of breath, onto a tense spread "ee". The voice climbs back up from the floor, giving the word a clean V shape.

Hear it in a sentence

我们有一个问题。

Wǒmen yǒu yí ge wèntí.

We have a problem.

Listen: 我们有一个问题。

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

我们有一个问题。 protects wǒ with the toneless men, so it keeps its dip and yǒu keeps its own — the two are not adjacent. Then yí is the converted 一 before the underlyingly-falling ge. The sentence ends with the V of wèntí, so it finishes by climbing.

Where English speakers slip

Too little breath on the t gives dí. Push the air. On the first syllable, learners drop the lip-rounding and produce "un", or over-round it into "woon". And the V transition gets smoothed: wèn stops short of the floor so tí has less distance to climb, which flattens the whole word into something mid-level.