Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "找" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 找 in Chinese?

找 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʈʂɑʊ˨˩˦/. It means “to look for / to find.” jao with the tongue curled back and no puff of air, on a low sagging pitch. The vowel opens on "ah" and closes toward "oo".

jao with the tongue curled back and no puff of air, on a low sagging pitch. The vowel opens on "ah" and closes toward "oo".

找 /ʈʂɑʊ˨˩˦/

zhǎo

Whether this verb dips or rises is decided by whatever object comes after it. Zhǎo nǐ and zhǎo shuǐ would push it up to a rising tone; zhǎo tā or zhǎo shū leave it low. Because searching verbs take all kinds of objects, this word is a good one for building the habit of checking the next syllable before you speak.

Listen: 找

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Sound it out

zh- Retroflex and unaspirated: the tongue tip curls up and back to touch behind the ridge, then releases into a hollow hiss with no escaping breath.

-ao A long glide from open "ah" to a rounded finish. Its length is helpful here, since a third tone needs time to sink.

zhǎo (dip) The pitch sinks to the floor of your voice. Because the tongue is already in an unusual position for the initial, keeping the pitch controlled at the same time takes practice.

Hear it in a sentence

我找不到我的手机。

Wǒ zhǎo bu dào wǒ de shǒujī.

I can't find my phone.

Listen: 我找不到我的手机。

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

我找不到我的手机。 contains the reduced form of 不. In a potential complement like zhǎo bu dào, the negator loses its tone entirely and becomes a quick toneless bu — not bù and not bú. The wǒ before zhǎo is adjacent to a third tone, so it rises. And shǒujī at the end pairs a dip with a level high.

Where English speakers slip

Most learners lay the tongue flat and produce an English j, which pushes the word toward the palatal jiǎo. Curl the tip back until the sound goes hollow. The bigger sentence-level error is restoring a full tone to bu in the potential construction: saying zhǎo bù dào makes it sound like a different, more emphatic grammatical structure, and native speakers notice immediately.