LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "丈夫" in Chinese?
jahng-fu: a hard-falling first syllable with the tongue curled back, then a weak toneless second.
zhàngfu
A drop, then a syllable carrying no pitch, giving a heavy-light shape. The neutralisation of 夫 is specific to this word: in 功夫 gōngfu it is also toneless, but as an independent morpheme it carries a level tone. Whether a syllable neutralises is a fact about the individual word rather than about the character.
Listen: 丈夫
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
她丈夫是医生。
Tā zhàngfu shì yīshēng.
Her husband is a doctor.
Listen: 她丈夫是医生。
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她丈夫是医生。 gives tā level, zhàng falling, fu fading, shì falling, yī level, shēng level. Two consecutive falls with a toneless syllable between them, then a two-syllable high plateau at the end. The plateau is where learners let the pitch drift downward, losing both first tones at once.
Where English speakers slip
The tongue lies flat, giving an English j, and the back nasal drifts forward to zhàn — two separate errors in one syllable. Curl the tongue and close at the back. On the second syllable, restoring a level tone gives zhàng fū, which sounds over-enunciated. And the rounded "oo" often comes out slack rather than tightly pursed.