Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "晚上" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 晚上 in Chinese?

晚上 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /wan˨˩˦.ʂɑŋ/. It means “evening.” wahn-shang: a low sagging first syllable, then a weak toneless second. Structurally identical to 早上.

wahn-shang: a low sagging first syllable, then a weak toneless second. Structurally identical to 早上.

晚上 /wan˨˩˦.ʂɑŋ/

wǎnshang

Dip then nothing, and the neutral suffix again insulates the first syllable from anything to the right. Comparing this word with 晚安, where ān keeps a full level tone, shows that 晚 behaves differently depending on the second half: in one case the suffix is weightless, in the other it carries the phrase's second real tone.

Listen: 晚上

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Sound it out

wǎn Lip-rounding opens the glide, then a broad open "ah" that unrounds, closed with the tongue tip at the ridge. The voice settles at the bottom.

shang Toneless: tongue curled back for the retroflex hiss, an open "ah", and closure at the back. The word therefore contains both nasals — front on the first syllable, back on the second — which makes it a compact contrast drill.

Hear it in a sentence

今天晚上见。

Jīntiān wǎnshang jiàn.

See you this evening.

Listen: 今天晚上见。

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今天晚上见。 gives jīn and tiān two level syllables, then wǎn dips, shang fades, and jiàn plunges. The sentence therefore holds high for two beats, sinks to the floor, and drops from the top again — the leap from the low shang back up to the start of jiàn's fall is the largest interval in it and the one most often flattened.

Where English speakers slip

As with 早上, learners restore a full tone to shang. Let it fade. The vowel in wǎn darkens to "won" under the influence of the w-glide, and the two nasal endings get merged so that both syllables rhyme — they should not. Feel where the tongue finishes on each: forward for the first, nowhere near the teeth for the second.