Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "做" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 做 in Chinese?

做 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tswo˥˩/. It means “to do / to make.” dzwor, one beat, dropping sharply. The z is a "ds" at the teeth and the vowel glides from "oo" toward "aw".

dzwor, one beat, dropping sharply. The z is a "ds" at the teeth and the vowel glides from "oo" toward "aw".

做 /tswo˥˩/

zuò

The pitch is fixed, and so is the awkward fact that this is a perfect homophone of 坐 zuò, "to sit". Tone does not help here — the two are true homophones distinguished only by context and by the characters, which is a good reminder that Mandarin has plenty of homophones even after tone is accounted for.

Listen: 做

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Sound it out

z- Tongue tip at the teeth ridge, released into a hiss with no voicing and no breath — the consonant at the end of "kids", used to start the syllable.

-uo A rounded glide: lips push forward for "oo" and then open toward "aw". Written -uo, and both halves need to be present, so it is not simply "oh".

zuò (falling) High to low across the glide. Because the vowel is already moving, keeping the pitch on its own trajectory takes deliberate control at first.

Hear it in a sentence

你今晚做什么？

Nǐ jīnwǎn zuò shénme?

What are you doing tonight?

Listen: 你今晚做什么？

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你今晚做什么？ places zuò between the level wǎn and the rising shén. Nǐ at the front is followed by the high jīn, so it keeps its full dip. The question ends on the toneless me, meaning the sentence finishes low and flat despite being a question — no upward swoop is permitted.

Where English speakers slip

The initial gets read as English z, which is a voiced continuant and misses the stop closure entirely. Touch the tongue to the ridge first. The vowel is the second problem: reducing -uo to a plain "oh" loses the rounded onset and makes the syllable sound like a different final. And learners often shorten the fall so much that it reads as level, which puts the word in the wrong tone category altogether.