Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "脏" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 脏 in Chinese?

脏 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tsɑŋ˥/. It means “dirty.” dzahng, held high and flat. A "ds" onset at the teeth, a wide open vowel, and a back nasal.

dzahng, held high and flat. A "ds" onset at the teeth, a wide open vowel, and a back nasal.

脏 /tsɑŋ˥/

zāng

Nothing in the tone system disturbs this syllable, and it disturbs nothing either — a dipping tone in front of it keeps its full descent, and 不 before it stays as bù. That makes it a useful stable anchor in a sentence full of third tones, which is exactly the situation in the example below.

Listen: 脏

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

Sound it out

z- Contact at the teeth ridge, then a releases into a hiss — the consonant at the end of "beds", with no voicing and no puff of air.

-ang The vowel opens right out, jaw down, sealed at the back of the mouth by ng. The tongue tip drops away completely after the initial.

zāng (level) High and unwavering from the vowel right through the nasal. Nasal endings are where the pitch most often sags, so hold it and cut it cleanly.

Hear it in a sentence

我的手很脏。

Wǒ de shǒu hěn zāng.

My hands are dirty.

Listen: 我的手很脏。

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

我的手很脏。 has a sandhi in an easily overlooked place. Wǒ is followed by the toneless de, so it keeps its dip. But shǒu and hěn are adjacent third tones across a phrase boundary, so shǒu rises: shóu hěn zāng. Then hěn keeps its dip because zāng is level. The change happens between the noun and the adverb, not where beginners expect it.

Where English speakers slip

Reading z as an English z gives a buzzing continuant with no stop closure — touch the ridge first. Aspirating instead produces cāng. And the shǒu hěn sandhi in the example is one of the least-noticed in the whole beginner course, because learners scan for third-tone pairs inside words and this one straddles two different phrases.