LingoDrop
Chinese · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "住" in Chinese?
joo with the tongue curled back and no puff of air, dropping hard. Tight rounded vowel, steep fall.
zhù
No rule alters this one. Its usual companion is 在 zài, also a fourth tone, so zhù zài gives two consecutive falls: the first shortened, the second fuller. That verb-preposition pair is worth practising as a rhythmic unit rather than as two separate words.
Listen: 住
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
我住在上海。
Wǒ zhù zài Shànghǎi.
I live in Shanghai.
Listen: 我住在上海。
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我住在上海。 puts three falling tones in a row — zhù, zài and shàng — before the dipping hǎi. Wǒ at the start keeps its full dip since zhù is falling. The challenge is the triple descent: each fall must return to the top of the range before dropping, otherwise the sentence turns into one long slide and the place name loses its shape.
Where English speakers slip
Beginners lay the tongue flat and get an English j, which pulls the word toward the palatal jù. Curl the tongue tip back until the sound goes hollow. Aspirating instead gives chù. And on the tone side, the triple fall in the example sentence is routinely levelled out, which makes the sentence sound monotone even when every consonant is right.