LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "以后" in Chinese?
yee-HOE: a low sagging first syllable, then a hard-falling second with a scraped h.
yǐhòu
Dip then fall, with no sandhi inside. This word and 以前 share their first syllable, and both keep yǐ dipping because neither second syllable dips — hòu falls and qián rises. So the pair is tonally parallel at the start and divergent at the end, which is a helpful way to file them mentally.
Listen: 以后
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
下课以后我去吃饭。
Xiàkè yǐhòu wǒ qù chī fàn.
After class I'm going to eat.
Listen: 下课以后我去吃饭。
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下课以后我去吃饭。 gives xià and kè two consecutive falls, then yǐ dips, hòu falls, wǒ dips, qù falls, chī holds high and fàn falls. Wǒ keeps its dip because qù falls rather than dips. Five of the eight syllables descend, and the level chī near the end is the only real plateau in the sentence.
Where English speakers slip
The h vanishes before the rounded vowel for many learners, leaving "oh". Add friction. The vowel is the second issue: starting fully rounded as in English "hoe" makes it too dark from the outset — begin more open and round only at the end. And yǐ is often given a level pitch because it feels like a grammatical prefix rather than a syllable with a tone.