Chinese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "早上" in Chinese?

Q: How do you pronounce 早上 in Chinese?

早上 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tsɑʊ˨˩˦.ʂɑŋ/. It means “morning.” dzao-shang: a low sagging first syllable with a "ds" onset, then a weak toneless second. Note that 上 loses its falling tone entirely here.

dzao-shang: a low sagging first syllable with a "ds" onset, then a weak toneless second. Note that 上 loses its falling tone entirely here.

早上 /tsɑʊ˨˩˦.ʂɑŋ/

zǎoshang

The suffix has gone neutral, and this has a structural payoff. Because shang carries no tone, zǎo is never adjacent to a following dipping syllable, so it keeps its full descent even in phrases like zǎoshang hǎo where a bare zǎo would have converted. The neutral syllable acts as an insulator.

Listen: 早上

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Sound it out

zǎo Contact right at the teeth, then a hiss with no breath, then a long glide from "ah" toward "oo". The voice sinks to the floor across it.

shang Toneless: retroflex sh with the tip curled back, an open "ah", and closure at the back of the mouth. Short and light, sitting at the low pitch zǎo left behind.

Hear it in a sentence

我每天早上跑步。

Wǒ měi tiān zǎoshang pǎobù.

I run every morning.

Listen: 我每天早上跑步。

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我每天早上跑步。 opens with wǒ and měi adjacent, both dipping, so wǒ rises. Then tiān holds high, zǎo dips, shang fades, pǎo dips, and bù falls. Notice zǎo and pǎo are separated by the toneless shang, so no conversion occurs between them — the neutral syllable does its insulating job again.

Where English speakers slip

Restoring a full falling tone to shang is the standard error, producing zǎo shàng with two heavy beats. It should be almost thrown away. On the first syllable, reading z as an English z removes the stop closure — touch the ridge first. And the wǒ měi conversion at the start is missed as reliably as ever.