Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "字" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 字 in Chinese?

字 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tsz̩˥˩/. It means “character / written word.” dz, dropping hard. There is no vowel in this syllable at all — the tongue tip stays at the teeth and buzzes while the pitch plummets.

dz, dropping hard. There is no vowel in this syllable at all — the tongue tip stays at the teeth and buzzes while the pitch plummets.

字 /tsz̩˥˩/

zì

The plunge holds in every context and it flips the negator: 不 before it becomes bú. What makes the syllable demanding is not the tone but the absence of a vowel — the pitch has to move across a sound that is barely more than a buzz, which leaves very little acoustic room.

Listen: 字

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Sound it out

z- The tip meets the teeth ridge and lets go into a hiss, with no voicing and no puff of air — the consonant at the end of "beds".

-i A decoy spelling. After z the letter signals that the tongue holds its position and begins to voice, producing a buzz. No "ee" and no schwa.

zì (falling) A steep, decisive drop compressed into a syllable with almost no vowel body to carry it. The descent has to be fast and complete.

Hear it in a sentence

这个字怎么读？

Zhège zì zěnme dú?

How do you read this character?

Listen: 这个字怎么读？

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

这个字怎么读？ gives zhè falling, ge toneless, zì falling, zěn dipping, me toneless, dú rising. Two consecutive falls at the start need separate resets, and zěn keeps its full dip because me is toneless. The question ends by climbing on dú, but that is the word's own tone rather than an interrogative rise.

Where English speakers slip

"Zee" is the near-universal rendering and it imports a vowel that does not exist. Keep the tongue at the teeth and just voice. Reading z as an English z is the other half — it removes the stop closure and leaves a continuant. And because the syllable is so short, the fourth tone tends to come out level rather than plunging.