How to Pronounce '谢谢': Chinese Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 谢谢 in Chinese?

谢谢 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɕjɛ˥˩.ɕjɛ/. It means “thank you.” Something like shyeh-shyeh, but the initial is not English "sh". The first syllable falls hard; the second is a light, toneless echo of it.

How do you pronounce "谢谢" in Chinese?

Something like shyeh-shyeh, but the initial is not English "sh". The first syllable falls hard; the second is a light, toneless echo of it.

谢谢 /ɕjɛ˥˩.ɕjɛ/

xièxie

This is a reduplicated word, and Mandarin routinely neutralises the second half of one. The dictionary tone on 谢 is fourth, but only the first instance keeps it; the repeat becomes toneless, so the word has a strong-weak shape rather than two equal beats. That weak second syllable is what makes the word sound casual and unforced.

Listen: 谢谢

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Sound it out

x- Spread your lips into a smile, put the blade of the tongue up near the hard palate just behind the ridge, and hiss. It is thinner and brighter than English "sh", and the tongue tip stays down instead of curling.

-iè A two-part vowel: a quick "ee" glide into an open "eh" as in "bet". The pitch starts high and drops off a cliff across that movement.

-xie The same syllable repeated, but stripped of its tone. It is shorter, quieter, and takes whatever low pitch the falling first syllable ended on — a reduplication reduced almost to a breath.

Hear it in a sentence

谢谢你的帮助。

Xièxie nǐ de bāngzhù.

Thank you for your help.

Listen: 谢谢你的帮助。

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谢谢你的帮助。 continues the pattern of light grammatical syllables: after the neutral -xie comes nǐ, then de, another toneless particle, before the phrase recovers its footing on bāngzhù. So the sentence has two pitch-less valleys, and if you give every syllable equal weight it will sound like a list rather than a sentence.

Where English speakers slip

The commonest mistake is a flat, chirpy "shay-shay" with both syllables equal and both vowels the wrong shape. Two fixes: make the first syllable fall decisively from high to low, and let the second one go slack rather than matching it. The initial deserves separate attention — using English "sh" pulls x toward the retroflex sh of 是 and 上, a contrast Mandarin cares about a great deal.