LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "以前" in Chinese?
yee-CHYEN: a low sagging first syllable, then a rising second with an aspirated palatal initial.
yǐqián
Dip then climb, with no rule firing. On the left edge yǐ converts before a dipping syllable is irrelevant here — what matters is that a dipping tone before this word will convert, since yǐ dips. So wǒ yǐqián becomes wó yǐqián, which is exactly what the example sentence requires.
Listen: 以前
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
我以前来过这里。
Wǒ yǐqián láiguo zhèlǐ.
I've been here before.
Listen: 我以前来过这里。
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我以前来过这里。 opens with that conversion: wǒ and yǐ are adjacent third tones, so wǒ rises. Then qián climbs, lái climbs again, guo goes toneless, zhè falls and lǐ dips. Two consecutive rises on qián and lái need separate downward resets, which is where the sentence usually goes flat.
Where English speakers slip
Swallowing the breath on the q gives jián, and the -ian final opens out to "chyahn" when it should be a tight "eh". The q also tends to be produced as an English "ch" with rounded lips and the tongue too far back — spread the lips instead. And the wǒ yǐ conversion at the start is skipped as reliably here as it is in 已经.