How to Pronounce '五': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 五 in Chinese?

五 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /u˨˩˦/. It means “five.” "oo" with tightly rounded lips, sunk to the bottom of your voice. No consonant at all — the w in the pinyin is a spelling convention.

How do you pronounce "五" in Chinese?

"oo" with tightly rounded lips, sunk to the bottom of your voice. No consonant at all — the w in the pinyin is a spelling convention.

五 /u˨˩˦/

wǔ

As a lone third tone it dips fully, but 五 sits in a genuinely awkward numerical neighbourhood: in wǔ diǎn and wǔ běn a following third tone makes it rise to a second, while in wǔ tiān or wǔ kuài it stays low. Because numbers are so often followed by measure words, the sandhi comes up constantly.

Listen: 五

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Sound it out

w- Written, not spoken as a separate sound. Pinyin adds w because no syllable may begin with a bare u; what you actually produce is lip-rounding at the front of the vowel.

-ǔ A tight, high back "oo" with the lips pushed forward into a small circle. Tighter than English "food" and with no drift toward a diphthong.

the dip The pitch travels to the bottom of your range and stays low. Held long enough that the syllable feels weighty, which is one of the clearest signals distinguishing it from a quick first tone.

Hear it in a sentence

我有五块钱。

Wǒ yǒu wǔ kuài qián.

I have five yuan.

Listen: 我有五块钱。

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我有五块钱。 opens with wǒ yǒu, two third tones in contact, so wǒ becomes rising. Then wǔ is followed by kuài, a fourth tone, so it keeps its full low dip. That gives you a rise, a dip, another dip, a hard fall and a rise — five syllables, five different pitch movements, and a good drill for hearing the difference between rising and dipping.

Where English speakers slip

Learners often round the lips only halfway and produce something between "oo" and "uh", which blurs the syllable toward the tone-less filler sounds. Push the lips forward deliberately. The tone error is subtler: because the syllable has no consonant to launch it, the pitch tends to start mid and stay mid, which reads as a light first or second tone rather than the deep dip you want.