Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "在" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 在 in Chinese?

在 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tsaɪ˥˩/. It means “at / in (location); to be at.” dzai, rhyming with "eye", on a hard falling pitch. The z is a "ds" cluster made right at the teeth, not an English z.

dzai, rhyming with "eye", on a hard falling pitch. The z is a "ds" cluster made right at the teeth, not an English z.

在 /tsaɪ˥˩/

zài

Its own pitch never budges. Its influence on neighbours is where it matters: 不 before 在 becomes bú, and 一 before it becomes yí. As a very high-frequency preposition, 在 is one of the most common triggers for both of those changes.

Listen: 在

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Sound it out

z- The consonant at the end of English "beds", moved to the front of a syllable: tongue tip at the teeth ridge, released into a hiss, with no voicing and no aspiration.

-ai A full diphthong from open "ah" to close "ee", giving the syllable enough length for the tone to move across it.

zài (falling) From the top of your range straight to the bottom, fast. Because 在 is a grammatical word it is often said quickly, but even compressed the fall must be steep.

Hear it in a sentence

我在家。

Wǒ zài jiā.

I am at home.

Listen: 我在家。

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我在家。 is three syllables covering three different pitch shapes: wǒ low, zài falling, jiā high and level. Wǒ keeps its full dip because zài is not a third tone. The sentence ends up sounding like a descent followed by a jump back to the top, which is a very typical Mandarin contour and quite unlike anything English does with a three-word sentence.

Where English speakers slip

The initial is the usual casualty: learners say "zye" with an English z, which is voiced and made without the stop closure. Mandarin's z begins with the tongue actually touching, then releasing into the hiss. The other frequent slip is levelling the tone because the word is grammatical and feels unimportant — but a level zai does not read as 在 to a listener.