Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "医生" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 医生 in Chinese?

医生 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /i˥.ʂɤŋ˥/. It means “doctor.” yee-SHUNG, both syllables high and flat. A bare vowel, then a retroflex hiss with a back nasal — and no pitch movement anywhere.

yee-SHUNG, both syllables high and flat. A bare vowel, then a retroflex hiss with a back nasal — and no pitch movement anywhere.

医生 /i˥.ʂɤŋ˥/

yīshēng

The pitch never moves — two flat syllables with no movement. Note that 生 keeps its full first tone here, unlike in 先生 xiānsheng and 学生 xuésheng where it goes toneless — the same character behaving three different ways across three common words, which is a fact to memorise rather than derive.

Listen: 医生

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Sound it out

yī A clean "ee" with no consonant in front of it written with a y for spelling reasons, spread and steady, held at the top of the range.

shēng The sh is retroflex — tip up and back — onto a mid back unrounded vowel sealed at the back of the mouth by ng. Also level, so the word is a two-syllable plateau.

Hear it in a sentence

医生早上看病人。

Yīshēng zǎoshang kàn bìngrén.

The doctor sees patients in the morning.

Listen: 医生早上看病人。

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医生早上看病人。 keeps zǎo at a full dip because shang is toneless. Then kàn plunges, bìng plunges again, and rén climbs. So the sentence opens with a two-syllable plateau, sinks, drops twice, and climbs out — with the two consecutive falls needing separate resets.

Where English speakers slip

Expect the retroflex to collapse into an English "sh" and the -eng vowel gets fronted to an English "eng", when the tongue should be pulled back. And the two-syllable plateau declines across its length, because English intonation drifts downward — hold the second syllable at exactly the height of the first.