Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "纸" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 纸 in Chinese?

纸 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʈʂʐ̩˨˩˦/. It means “paper.” jrr, low and sagging, with the tongue curled back and no vowel at all. Same syllable shape as 只 zhǐ.

jrr, low and sagging, with the tongue curled back and no vowel at all. Same syllable shape as 只 zhǐ.

纸 /ʈʂʐ̩˨˩˦/

zhǐ

The neighbour decides. This syllable is shared with 只 zhǐ, "only", a true homophone in both segments and tone, so nothing audible distinguishes paper from the adverb. Context does all the work, which is a useful reminder that Mandarin's tones reduce ambiguity without eliminating it.

Listen: 纸

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Sound it out

zh- The tip curls back to meet the area behind the ridge; the release is hollow and completely breathless.

-i A decoy spelling. The tongue holds its retroflex position and begins to voice, producing a buzz with no "ee" anywhere in it.

zhǐ (dip) Down into the basement of the range. With almost no vowel body, the low pitch must be present from the first instant of voicing.

Hear it in a sentence

请给我一张白纸。

Qǐng gěi wǒ yì zhāng bái zhǐ.

Give me a blank sheet of paper, please.

Listen: 请给我一张白纸。

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

请给我一张白纸。 opens with three consecutive dipping tones: qǐng, gěi and wǒ. Mandarin raises all but the last, so it comes out qíng géi wǒ. Then yì is the converted 一 before the level zhāng, bái climbs, and zhǐ dips at the end. Two conversions of different kinds in one sentence.

Where English speakers slip

"Jee" is the standard rendering, importing a vowel and flattening the retroflex. Curl and buzz. The three-in-a-row conversion at the start of the sentence is the other difficulty — producing three separate dips is slow and unmistakably foreign, and the run qíng géi wǒ should be practised as a fixed unit.