Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "有" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 有 in Chinese?

有 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /joʊ˨˩˦/. It means “to have / there is.” Like the English word "yo" said very low and heavily, with the vowel drifting toward "oh". The dipping tone is the whole point of the syllable.

Like the English word "yo" said very low and heavily, with the vowel drifting toward "oh". The dipping tone is the whole point of the syllable.

有 /joʊ˨˩˦/

yǒu

Standing alone it keeps the full low dip, but 有 is one of the highest-frequency sandhi triggers in the language because so much of what follows it is also third tone. Wǒ yǒu together already forces the first word to rise; add a third-tone noun and the chain reorganises again. Learn it as a word that reacts to its neighbours.

Listen: 有

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Sound it out

y- A consonantal "y" as in "yes", pressing the tongue up toward the palate before the vowel is released.

-ou Starts at a mid "uh"-like position and rounds off toward "oo". It is much less rounded at the beginning than English "oh", so avoid launching straight into a rounded vowel.

yǒu (dipping) The pitch falls to the floor of your voice and lingers. Sustained slightly longer than the other tones, which is a useful cue: if it feels too long, it is probably about right.

Hear it in a sentence

我有一只狗。

Wǒ yǒu yì zhī gǒu.

I have a dog.

Listen: 我有一只狗。

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我有一只狗。 is a small tone laboratory. Wǒ and yǒu are both third tone and adjacent, so wǒ rises: wó yǒu. Then 一 sits before the first-tone zhī and has shifted to a fourth tone, yì. And gǒu at the end is a third tone with nothing after it, so it gets the full dip-and-curl treatment.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers tend to say it briskly, like the exclamation "yo!", high and short. That reads as a first tone and loses the word. Slow it down and let the pitch sink. The second issue is the vowel: substituting the pure "oh" of English "go" makes it sound like a different final. Begin unrounded and round only at the end.