Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "准备" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 准备 in Chinese?

准备 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʈʂwən˨˩˦.peɪ˥˩/. It means “to prepare / get ready.” jwun-BAY: a low dipping first syllable with a retroflex onset, then a falling second with an unaspirated b.

jwun-BAY: a low dipping first syllable with a retroflex onset, then a falling second with an unaspirated b.

准备 /ʈʂwən˨˩˦.peɪ˥˩/

zhǔnbèi

Dip into fall, and no rule fires — sandhi would require the second syllable to dip as well. That makes 准备 a good contrast case against words like 可以, where the same first-syllable hook does change. The difference lies entirely in what comes second.

Listen: 准备

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Sound it out

zhǔn Retroflex zh with the tip curled back, then a rounded glide into a short central vowel closed by a front n. The voice sags to the bottom across all of it.

bèi Lips close and part with the breath held in, onto a tight diphthong from "eh" to "ee". The pitch collapses from high to low, so the word ends decisively after its low start.

Hear it in a sentence

你准备好了吗？

Nǐ zhǔnbèi hǎo le ma?

Are you ready?

Listen: 你准备好了吗？

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你准备好了吗？ has an interesting near-miss. Nǐ and zhǔn are adjacent third tones, so nǐ rises. Then bèi falls, and hǎo dips — but bèi sits between zhǔn and hǎo, so no further sandhi occurs. The sentence ends with le and ma, two toneless syllables in a row, which is why it fades out rather than resolving.

Where English speakers slip

The first syllable draws two errors at once: the retroflex flattens into an English j, and the rounded glide gets dropped so it comes out as "jen". Curl the tongue back and round the lips before releasing. On the second syllable, aspirating the b gives pèi. And the nǐ zhǔn sandhi is easy to overlook because the two syllables belong to different words.