LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "有人" in Chinese?
yo-RUN: a low sagging first syllable, then a rising second with a retroflex buzz and completely flat lips.
yǒurén
Low first, high second, with no conversion — rén rises, so yǒu keeps its low contour. On the left edge, though, yǒu is a dipping tone and converts readily, and since it so often follows a noun or pronoun that also dips, this word gets caught up in sandhi more than its own structure suggests.
Listen: 有人
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
门口有人。
Ménkǒu yǒurén.
There's someone at the door.
Listen: 门口有人。
Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.
门口有人。 shows that in action: kǒu and yǒu are adjacent dipping tones, so kǒu rises. The sentence therefore runs mén rising, kóu rising, yǒu dipping, rén rising — three climbs and one sag in four syllables. Each rise needs its own downward reset, which makes this short sentence surprisingly demanding.
Where English speakers slip
English habits do their worst on the r: rounded lips and a bunched tongue give something like "run", which is close enough to be understood but immediately foreign. Unround and curl. On the tone side, the kǒu yǒu conversion crosses a word boundary, which is exactly the kind beginners overlook, and three consecutive rises invite a single flat plateau.