LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "颜色" in Chinese?
yen-SUH, with the first syllable rising and the second dropping hard. The vowel in sè is not "eh" — it is a back, unrounded sound English has no letter for.
yánsè
A rising tone followed by a falling one, with no sandhi involved — neither second nor fourth tones change under influence. What does happen is rhythmic: the falling second syllable is the one that carries the phrase's weight, so yán is slightly compressed and sè slightly longer.
Listen: 颜色
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
你最喜欢什么颜色？
Nǐ zuì xǐhuan shénme yánsè?
What's your favorite color?
Listen: 你最喜欢什么颜色？
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你最喜欢什么颜色？ buries the word at the end of a long question and gives you two sandhi events on the way there. Nǐ zuì is fine as written, but xǐhuan is a third tone plus a toneless syllable, and shénme is a rise plus another toneless syllable. So the question moves through two flat, weightless patches before landing on the clear rise-fall of yánsè.
Where English speakers slip
English speakers almost always say "yahn" for the first syllable, importing the a they see on the page. The -an final after a y-glide is genuinely fronted, so aim for the vowel of "yen". On the second syllable the instinct is "say" or "seh"; both are wrong because the tongue must move backward, not forward. Try saying "uh" and then pulling your tongue further back while keeping the lips flat.