Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "学校" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 学校 in Chinese?

学校 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ɕɥɛ˧˥.ɕjɑʊ˥˩/. It means “school.” shweh-SHYAO: a rising first syllable with the rounded front ü, then a hard-falling second. Both begin with the thin x hiss.

shweh-SHYAO: a rising first syllable with the rounded front ü, then a hard-falling second. Both begin with the thin x hiss.

学校 /ɕɥɛ˧˥.ɕjɑʊ˥˩/

xuéxiào

Climb then plunge, with no rule firing. Having the same initial twice makes the word a concentrated x drill: both syllables need spread lips and a tongue tip pointing down, and if either one drifts toward a retroflex sh the word starts to sound like something else entirely.

Listen: 学校

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Sound it out

xué Smile the lips wide for the thin palatal hiss, then the -üe final: tongue high and front as for "ee" while the lips round, opening out to "eh". The tone lifts from mid to high.

xiào The same thin hiss, then a long glide from "ee" through a wide open "ah" toward a rounded finish. The pitch plunges from high to low, and the long vowel makes the descent very audible.

Hear it in a sentence

我骑车去学校。

Wǒ qí chē qù xuéxiào.

I go to school by bike.

Listen: 我骑车去学校。

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我骑车去学校。 keeps wǒ at a full dip because qí rises. Then qí climbs, chē holds level, qù plunges, xué climbs again, xiào plunges. The sentence alternates rise and fall through its whole length, and the two rises need separate downward resets rather than being run together.

Where English speakers slip

English "sh" replaces the x twice over, which is the single most common error in this word. Smile, keep the tip down, aim the hiss high. The ü in xué is replaced by a w-glide for most learners, and the long glide in xiào gets shortened to "shao" — so a two-syllable word can easily accumulate four separate mistakes.