Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "这里" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 这里 in Chinese?

这里 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʈʂɤ˥˩.li˨˩˦/. It means “here.” juh-LEE: a hard-falling first syllable with the tongue curled back, then a low sagging second.

juh-LEE: a hard-falling first syllable with the tongue curled back, then a low sagging second.

这里 /ʈʂɤ˥˩.li˨˩˦/

zhèlǐ

Fall then dip, with no sandhi inside the word. On its right edge, though, 里 is a third tone, so it converts whenever another dipping syllable follows — zhèlǐ děng and zhèlǐ hǎo both push it up to a rise. On its left edge nothing can happen, because zhè falls.

Listen: 这里

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Sound it out

zhè Retroflex and unaspirated, onto Mandarin's back unrounded e with the lips flat. The pitch dives from high to low in a very compressed space.

lǐ A bright forward l onto a tense spread "ee", with the voice sinking to the floor. The contrast between the retracted vowel of zhè and the high front vowel of lǐ makes the tongue travel a long way.

Hear it in a sentence

我在这里。

Wǒ zài zhèlǐ.

I am here.

Listen: 我在这里。

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我在这里。 ends on lǐ, so the dipping tone gets its full contour including the final lift. Wǒ keeps its dip because zài falls, and then zài and zhè give two consecutive drops before the sentence sinks. So the melody is low, down, down, low — heavily weighted toward the bottom, with the two falls in the middle providing the only height.

Where English speakers slip

Two errors arrive together: the tongue flattens into an English j and the vowel comes out as "eh", producing "jeh-lee". Curl the tongue back and retract the vowel. The l is a smaller but real issue: a dark English l darkens the following "ee" and can make the syllable sound closer to lǚ. Keep the tongue tip forward and the sound bright.