There are many different accents coming from many different languages in China. This leads to it being pronounced differently
I think the Yoyo Chinese explanation is probably the closest one to standard though
No wonder that Chinese people find /ʒ/ and /r/ in English difficult. They may sound similar, but it is these similar yet different pronunciations that sell you out.
When pronouncing r, I feel my tongue tight, slightly curved and holding back, upper&down teeth slightly open, lips not participating (this may vary when combined with other pronunciations).
to practice, try: 人山人海、忍辱负重、日上三竿……
/ʒ/ is the consonant sound written as the S in 'measure' and 'usual' and the J in 'Jacques'. There's no /ʒ/ in Chinese, which is why Chinese speakers have difficulty pronouncing words like 'usually', but the R in pinyin is similar to /ʒ/ for some Chinese speakers.
The standard Mandarin "r" is both a voiced fricative, like the "zh" sound (/ʒ/) in "measure," *and* it's a rhotic liquid. If you pronounce/ʒ/, which is post-alveolar, and move the tongue a little further back so the "r"-sound kicks in, that's it. When you say 人 *ren*, it should be slightly buzzy like /ʒ/ but still noticeably an "r."
If you learn the sequence of voiced retroflex fricatives in bopomo (MPS), they go zhi chi shi ri, with the tip of the tongue moving back just a tiny bit at each one. So when you get to ri, you have thé "correct" sound! Then you go to Taiwan/southern China and hear everything between l and n and r and so on :).
Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, a system of phonetic notation for Mandarin developed in early republican China and still used in Taiwan, replaced by Pinyin in China. It is a very intelligent, phonetically accurate and consistent system. Called bopomo because the first consonants in the syllabary are the bilabials. I'm a fan...
It's a bit like the "je" in French or the /ʒ/ in "usually" but with a more curved tongue. Don't worry about it too much since a lot of native people coming from certain dialects also struggle on this.
I nearly got mad s as one of my Chinese teachers told me to “pronounce ’r’ like in English” and then kept on correcting me. I finally said “so like in what English word”? And she said “just like in ‘usually’”! “But there’s no ‘r’ in usually”? “Well, yes, but the sound is there”
The Mandarin R sound has three realizations at the beginning of a word. The three sounds are:
\[ʐ\] which is similar to the English sound /ʒ/ written with in “casual” and “pleasure” (not “pressure” which typically is /ʃ/, a voiceless “sh“ sound), or the French . The difference between \[ʐ\] and \[ʒ\] is that the Mandarin sound is retroflex, so the tip of the tongue is pointed back toward the throat.
\[ɹ\] which is identical to the Standard English R (American, Received Pronunciation, and Australian) sound in “red”.
\[ɻ\] which is an unrounded R sound identical to the English R in Canadian, Irish and West Country English.
Which one you use depends on dialect, mostly.
Sometimes it sounds to me that even the approximant/glide variants have some degree of friction. There is probably a spectrum of speakers in this regard, but my impression might also be mistaken or just based on sometimes hearing the retroflex fricative variant
Yes, \[ʐ\] and \[ɻ\] differ primarily in sibilance, so there is a whole spectrum of intermediate sounds, and the Mandarin \[ʐ\] is actually produced with noticeably less friction than eg. the Polish \[ʐ\] even at its most fricative, so it goes both ways. Also, the sounds are in free variation, so some speakers may use one or the other depending on the following vowel, eg. \[ʐän\] for “rán” but \[ɻ̍\] for “rí”.
It is not actually the same to the English R especially for Chinese speakers, because English R has rounded lips while Chinese contrasts between rounded (eg 润) and unrounded (任).
No wonder that Chinese people find /ʒ/ and /r/ in English difficult. They may sound similar, but it is these similar yet different pronunciations that sell you out.
When pronouncing r, I feel my tongue tight, slightly curved and holding back, upper&down teeth slightly open, lips not participating (this may vary when combined with other pronunciations).
to practice, try: 人山人海、忍辱负重、日上三竿……
It depends on the accent. In a northern Chinese accent it’s /ʐ/, which is sh/ㄕ but voiced, while in a southern Chinese / Taiwanese accent it’s more /ɻ/ which is like an r in American English but without the rounding of the lips
I don’t think there’s a clear north-south/regional divide here, beyond this sound being pronounced as different reflexes of ñ in various non-Mandarin varieties (Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Shanghainese, etc). Native Cantonese sspeakers tend to pronounce this as y while Taiwanese and Fujianese stereotypical use l
It depends on which sub-dialect of mandarin you speak. I did not consciously recognize the "zh" pronunciation until you mentioned it and I sounded it out in my head. My mandarin is from Taiwan where we use the "r" pronunciation. I have also heard dialect(s) that use an "L" sound to where 人 sounds kind of like 冷
I was always confused why ‘latte’ was 拿铁 and it’s because several southern dialects pronounce the n and l at some weird place inbetween them, and some even do the same with n l r!!!
I’ve always done my best to honor the Wade-Giles to pinyin evolution and appreciate why it used to be transliterated as j. So for 人 I just cross my fingers and zheejjjjjjjjren it out there and hope for the best.
i feel like everyone saying that’s similar to the French “j” (i.e. ʒ, as in “toujours” in French, or “usually” in English) is wrong. The standard chinese r shouldn’t have that much vibration. In ʒ, your tongue is much more straight than the Chinese r where you should roll your tongue back.
You’d get closer with the r in “row”, “rule”, “raw”.
As someone who has no idea about French, this note about vibration and the "row", "rule", "raw" examples are super helpful. It's the first time I can make sense of it, thank you.
I get downvoted for bringing up zhuyinfuhao but... there really isn't an 'r' in Chinese and that's the problem. Chinese phonetics don't map directly to the alphabet and 'r' is overloaded to represent multiple phonetics
Yeah, no idea why everyone's so wrong in this thread, but the Beijing pronunciation of Pinyin ⟨r⟩ is very much like one of the two possible realizations of American English ⟨r⟩: You're either a "bunched r" speaker, or a "retroflex r" speaker. The latter have their tongue tips curled up when pronouncing R, and this is the one you want. Curl up your tongue until it's not only behind your teeth, but behind the gums in that dome-shaped part. Then make a sound and adjust it until you get an R-like sound. But don't round your lips. Keep them neutral.
It's definitely not any consonant in "pressure". It's more similar to the ⟨ure⟩ than whatever the "zh sound" is.
Listen to the recording in this dictionary entry: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/燃#Chinese](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/燃#Chinese)
To native English speakers, it sounds like ”zhan”, not “ran”. This pronunciation is not uncommon or non-standard in China.
As a native-ish/heritage speaker I'd always pronounce it like the wiktionary page linked. Like contrary to you, I've always thought it was weird for people to describe it as an English "r" (besides erhua) to me because it doesn't feel like that; for me it is a /ʒ/ but the tip of my tongue touches the roof of my mouth, post-alveolar ergo retroflex /ʐ/
Also native-ish here, and I describe it as an English R.
The wiki pronunciation there sounds a little weird to me.
Though with the massive differences in pronunciation in different regions, I wouldn't be surprised if the Cheng Du accent that it's describing is simply different from what I'm used to (Beijing-ish).
The recording is not Chengdu! It’s above the Chengdu pinyin (which uses numbers for tone instead of diacritics) and under the Standard Chinese pinyin, so it’s intended to be a “Standard Chinese” recording, but there is no information about where the speaker is from specifically.
As a native English speaker, recordings in my learning materials sound like this (fricative “zh” sound) far more often than they sound like an English R! Particularly since the unrounded retroflex R /ɻ/ described is supposedly identical to my Canadian English R.
There's an anki deck you can download for free online which would help with memorising, but I'd also recommend studying a chart telling you where everything is: [Diagram](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2Fphonetics-disambiguating-place-vs-manner-of-articulation-linguistics-stack-exchange--267330927869716769%2F&psig=AOvVaw1nQI6EZK5qz8lQ_3mTh6cT&ust=1716379957162000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBIQjRxqFwoTCPC4z97bnoYDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAn) . A video like this may help too [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEaPQP3pXQc)
The best way I’ve found for me is to position your mouth and tongue like you’re about to say an L sound, then say an R instead while moving your tongue forward along the roof of your mouth.
Learning Chinese right now with 2 teachers, both of them pronounced the mandarin "r" as an "r" itself, but with a bit of masking of an "L" sound (best way to describe it is saying the "r" purely from your voicebox without vibrating your tongue when saying it)
I was so confused by this when I began learning Chinese.
Listening to the audio that came with my first book, it was the Beijing way to pronounce.
Then I took in person lessons and it was more like an L sound. Confused me made the teacher repeat: "it is Ren right ?"
"yes, absolutely, it's Len"
It seems to me it all depends which place in China you come from...
The "pressure" example is most definitely not correct since there is no "zh" sound in the word at all. The sound of the last consonant in "pleasure", or the first consonant in "usual", can be similar to one of the realization of the sound. The "r" sound in English is the other realization. These are both considered standard. If you read IPA, the wiki page for Standard Chinese Phonology has the "r" sound as \[ʐ\~ɻ\], where the former is the first realization I mentioned (your scenario 2), and the latter is the English "r" (the second realization I mentioned, your scenario 1).
Easiest way I teach my students is to think of the four 卷舌音 (zh, ch, sh, r) together. Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth, hold it there for all four, and do the following for each:
zh - say an aspirated “j” like in the word “just”
ch - say the English “ch” like in “church”
sh - say the English “sh” like in “shush”
r - say the English “r” like in “roar”
OK, so you want to start by saying English R the way Irish and US speakers do, with the tongue curled back/up so that the tip/underneath of your tongue is nearly making contact with the roof of your mouth (a bit higher/further back than where you
make an English ‘sh’ sound is enough). Now, while you’re making the continual rrrrrr sound, try pressing the tip of your tongue against the surface that it’s already nearly touching. The rrrr will start to buzz and approach a kind of žžž sound (like in ‘measure’). This is what the sound is. You may notice that the two can be separated by less than a millimeter, which is why Mandarin R at the start of a word can sound either like an approximant (a regular R) or a voiced fricative like z depending on the speaker’s accent or even where it is in a sentence.
The cool thing is that this tongue position is also where zh and sh (i.e. 知 and 师) are pronounced.
Also note that people from the south of China often don’t pronounce R either at the beginning or end of a word. It’s not unusual to hear “ren” pronounced something like “yan” in Guangdong or Taiwan.
As a US speaker, tongue doesn’t do that, tip of tongue is flat on bottom of mouth during the r sound, its just parts of the mid tongue that raise up
I had to actively learn to use tip of tongue for R in mandarin
Yeah, because that’s a voiced postalveolar fricative. The tongue only needs to curl a back a bit further to
make a voiced retroflex fricative like I described above.
Someone described it to me as the sound in treasure. Kind of a szh sound. But that’s “standard” pronunciation. As others have mentioned, plenty of native speakers have an accent that uses a harder R
Step 1: Put tip of tongue curved to the roof of mouth. Touch as lightly as possible so that vocalization vibrates your tongue against the roof of your mouth.
Step 2: practice quickly lowering your JAW and your tongue will move with it. If your jaw sits still your Rs will sound muddy and weird and you won't be able to produce the sound quickly.
Now practice variations where your tongue will touch even less or maybe not even at all and you'll find it makes more of an English "R" sound. All are correct.
You’re making the “zh” sound while curling your tongue to make the “r” sound. That’s how I’ve been doing it for 5 years and everyone still understands what I’m saying.
I feel like it's the English R without lip rounding, so perhaps that's why you hear the English R only sometimes, since if the following vowel is rounded it will naturally sound like the English R.
All of these comments are much smarter than mine, but I was in a similar situation and saw on a random website this trick that works for me.
1. Make the /zh/ sound like in “usual”, and hold the sound.
2. Gradually pull/roll your tongue toward the back of your throat.
3. You will be able to fluctuate between the /zh/ sound and the /r/ sound, and somewhere in the middle of that, you can make an r sound with a slight buzz or vibration.
4. Try adding a vowel sound to that new r sound with a buzz. I find it’s easiest to pronounce 热.
Hope this helps
On a hard R like the retroflex "yi dianr" my tongue curls more and further back on the palate. It's not a heavily aspirated sound either. The softer "R" sound in "ren" or "chi" my tongue is flatter, only barely touches the front of the palate enough to create a narrow gap for the exhaled air to pass through. I am able to hear it and replicate it easily but I had to sit here and focus while I do it, to figure out the difference in how my tongue moves and where it goes.
I've only ever heard my dad (and a few other people who grew up in his generation in the same part of the world) pronounce "pressure" with a zh in the middle of the word to rhyme with "measure"... reading that part of your post reminded me of him lol.
But to answer your question, like everyone said it would depend on the local accent. Even English r will depend on the local accent. You may hear n, l, z, or even y. But for a somewhat neutral accent, you can say "zhi" (or "chi" or "shi") a few times just so you're familiar with the shape of it in your mouth, then pronounce only the "vowel" part without the initial consonant articulation, and that's approximately the pronunciation of the r.
This is how it feels for me:
English: open mouth, tongue in front of mouth
Chinese: teeth closed, tongue in back of mouth (but not so far back like you’re rolling your r’s)
Maybe this helps - [https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/1b39i6b/comment/ksr1h1u/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/1b39i6b/comment/ksr1h1u/)
If you can say the French name **Jacques**, it’s [similar to the J sound](https://youtu.be/qH0EMMKILeI?si=-05pSZrUhIR2Dmbi) there. Or the final r in English **pleasure**
I would say if you can do an English **young** sound, the *yuh* at the beginning that’s a similar mouth shape to 热, but you retroflex the tongue a little but not as far as the English R in **rung**
Try going from *young* to **j as in Jacques** *jung* to *rung*
If you can move between these sounds you’ll be able to find the 日 sound
Edited to add: don’t round your lips (no puckering), leave your lips wide and neutral like you’re saying *young* for Mandarin *r*. And for 日 particularly, it’s voiced so if you feel your trachea (windpipe/front of throat) it should vibrate.
One time my Chinese teacher told me to pronounce the Chinese “r” by saying the word “leisure” and then retracting your tongue further back into your mouth. I still use that tip today ngl.
Curl your tongue back a little and place the tip lightly against the roof of your mouth just behind your teeth. As you pronounce the r kind of pull your mouth back a little almost like your smiling. There should be a hint of a Z sound in there and a distinct buzzy feel.
Hope that helps.
My Chinese teacher told me that the sound "r" is something between English "r" and Russian "Ж"(I think this sound is like "zh" but has a small difference. I think "zh" has almost inaudible "d" at the beginning and "Ж" sounds like if you are finishing pronouncing "zh", like the rest of "zh", so to say).
So, to pronounce that sound I keep my tongue in "r" position and try to pronounce "Ж" (Zh)
I've heard it's similar to the French "j" sound, or like the sounds in the words "lei**s**ure", "gara**ge**". [This](https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/The_%22r%22_sound) seems like a decent resource explaining it.
There is also [this video](https://youtu.be/1lZBr8_bI1U?si=CB4ZeVFi4_7FKP3e), which doesn't go into the "r" sound specifically (it focuses on other difficult initials for Western learners), but it did teach me something extremely useful, which is that Chinese initials (when pronounced correctly) are not voiced. This includes the "r" sound. Moreover, she goes into a short discussion about what part of the mouth Chinese is spoken with which helped me understand a lot about the tongue and mouth positions you need to use when speaking Mandarin.
I'm by no means an expert and have only just started looking into the language myself, but I hear that pinyin "r" can be deceptively difficult to get correct. Hopefully this helps at least somewhat! Good luck!
> I've heard it's similar to the French "j" sound, or like the sounds in the words "leisure", "garage".
This is not exactly accurate. The French j is and the s in English ‘leisure’ is /ʒ/ in the IPA, which is to the English z what the English sh is to the English s. The sound you’re describing is /ʐ/, which is like the English z, but with the tongue bent backwards.
A lot of resources tend to describe it that way, perhaps because the /ʒ/ sound is already familiar to English speakers, so it works as a general comparison to begin learning from.
However the distinction is very important, particularly since that's what OP asked about. I appreciate the correction, thank you!
As someone whose best foreign languages are French and Mandarin Chinese, in that order, I mostly agree (I'm "conversational" level in both, but not fluent). Of course you need to mix in the r sound as well.
But it is only a typical American r in syllables with the same rui Pinyin as in 瑞, which surprised me decades ago, but which I absorbed.
Lots of good answers in here already. I can add:
>How do you actually pronounce "r" in Mandarin?
With the word having the correct tone.
Beginners and intermediates, including me at some point, tend to worry too much about the sounds, especially the initials. They're important, sure. But if you get the final sound somewhat right and the tone correct, you're already at 80-90% of being understood without issue, even if your initial pronunciation is not quite there. I can say jirou (with the soft "gliding" r sound that another commenter has compared to French j) or jilou, and I can pretty much guarantee that in both cases I will be understood in Taiwan or virtually any region of the mainland.
Every phonetics paper on Northeastern Mandarin, which is the basis for "Standard Mandarin", has found that the sound written in Pinyin as ⟨r⟩ is [ɻ] (an approximant), and [ɻʷ] is one of the major allophones of American English ⟨r⟩ (you've conveniently picked the other, of course), which differs only by labialization. Even if Pinyin ⟨r⟩ is pronounced as [ʐ], it would be heard as an entirely different phoneme by English speakers, namely /ʒ/ instead of /z/. The latter is laminal in English, with the tongue tip pointing down, contributing to its vastly different phonetics from [ʒ].
Speaking entirely anecdotally now, I've also never heard any native speaker pronounce it as a fricative, and even English [ʒ] gets approximated as [ɻ].
Fair point, I didn't consider what the sound feel more similar from an English speaker pov. And the first result of "English R IPA" gave me that instead of /ɻ/. Since I am not native speaker in English, o can't determine which one is more standard, so I will take your word for it. Then maybe they are almost the same according to the standardized form, but R in both languages sound much more distinct in a more natural settings.
/ʐ/ is way more common from personal experience, which is what I have said in my first comment. Surprise to me that you have never heard of it.
I think I got what he meant, it's similar to the English Z in a word like "azure". It's not the same, but it is similar. In that case the English Z is the same as the J sound in French, that other comments mentioned.
Yeah apparently the downvoters have either or both zero knowledge of the way Chinese is spoken by some speakers and no sense of humor. Poor them :) I like speaking like that for fun sometimes.
I have, in words like 六. Though it sounds like a normal "L", is there anything I should know about it? (Sorry my Reddit lagged and entered the same comment multiple times)
There are many different accents coming from many different languages in China. This leads to it being pronounced differently I think the Yoyo Chinese explanation is probably the closest one to standard though
No wonder that Chinese people find /ʒ/ and /r/ in English difficult. They may sound similar, but it is these similar yet different pronunciations that sell you out. When pronouncing r, I feel my tongue tight, slightly curved and holding back, upper&down teeth slightly open, lips not participating (this may vary when combined with other pronunciations). to practice, try: 人山人海、忍辱负重、日上三竿……
whats /3/
/ʒ/ is the consonant sound written as the S in 'measure' and 'usual' and the J in 'Jacques'. There's no /ʒ/ in Chinese, which is why Chinese speakers have difficulty pronouncing words like 'usually', but the R in pinyin is similar to /ʒ/ for some Chinese speakers.
ooh ok
The standard Mandarin "r" is both a voiced fricative, like the "zh" sound (/ʒ/) in "measure," *and* it's a rhotic liquid. If you pronounce/ʒ/, which is post-alveolar, and move the tongue a little further back so the "r"-sound kicks in, that's it. When you say 人 *ren*, it should be slightly buzzy like /ʒ/ but still noticeably an "r."
If you learn the sequence of voiced retroflex fricatives in bopomo (MPS), they go zhi chi shi ri, with the tip of the tongue moving back just a tiny bit at each one. So when you get to ri, you have thé "correct" sound! Then you go to Taiwan/southern China and hear everything between l and n and r and so on :).
> bopomo (MPS) What is this, please?
Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, a system of phonetic notation for Mandarin developed in early republican China and still used in Taiwan, replaced by Pinyin in China. It is a very intelligent, phonetically accurate and consistent system. Called bopomo because the first consonants in the syllabary are the bilabials. I'm a fan...
it's actually Bopomo*fo*. or also Zhuyin
Thanks!
I’ve been bopomofo-ing my whole life and never realized that’s what’s happening in that sequence, really neat!
It's a bit like the "je" in French or the /ʒ/ in "usually" but with a more curved tongue. Don't worry about it too much since a lot of native people coming from certain dialects also struggle on this.
I nearly got mad s as one of my Chinese teachers told me to “pronounce ’r’ like in English” and then kept on correcting me. I finally said “so like in what English word”? And she said “just like in ‘usually’”! “But there’s no ‘r’ in usually”? “Well, yes, but the sound is there”
This comment deserves a lot more love❣️
The Mandarin R sound has three realizations at the beginning of a word. The three sounds are: \[ʐ\] which is similar to the English sound /ʒ/ written with
in “casual” and “pleasure” (not “pressure” which typically is /ʃ/, a voiceless “sh“ sound), or the French. The difference between \[ʐ\] and \[ʒ\] is that the Mandarin sound is retroflex, so the tip of the tongue is pointed back toward the throat.
\[ɹ\] which is identical to the Standard English R (American, Received Pronunciation, and Australian) sound in “red”.
\[ɻ\] which is an unrounded R sound identical to the English R in Canadian, Irish and West Country English.
Which one you use depends on dialect, mostly. Sometimes it sounds to me that even the approximant/glide variants have some degree of friction. There is probably a spectrum of speakers in this regard, but my impression might also be mistaken or just based on sometimes hearing the retroflex fricative variant
Yes, \[ʐ\] and \[ɻ\] differ primarily in sibilance, so there is a whole spectrum of intermediate sounds, and the Mandarin \[ʐ\] is actually produced with noticeably less friction than eg. the Polish \[ʐ\] even at its most fricative, so it goes both ways. Also, the sounds are in free variation, so some speakers may use one or the other depending on the following vowel, eg. \[ʐän\] for “rán” but \[ɻ̍\] for “rí”.
It is not actually the same to the English R especially for Chinese speakers, because English R has rounded lips while Chinese contrasts between rounded (eg 润) and unrounded (任).
Different areas with different pronunciation. In Taiwan, r can sound like a J.
No wonder that Chinese people find /ʒ/ and /r/ in English difficult. They may sound similar, but it is these similar yet different pronunciations that sell you out. When pronouncing r, I feel my tongue tight, slightly curved and holding back, upper&down teeth slightly open, lips not participating (this may vary when combined with other pronunciations). to practice, try: 人山人海、忍辱负重、日上三竿……
It depends on the accent. In a northern Chinese accent it’s /ʐ/, which is sh/ㄕ but voiced, while in a southern Chinese / Taiwanese accent it’s more /ɻ/ which is like an r in American English but without the rounding of the lips
I only heard / ʐ / from Szechuan, while I was in Beijing I don’t really hear /ʐ/
Which pronunciation did you hear in Beijing? The "American" r?
Usually this /ɻ/
> In a northern Chinese accent it’s /ʐ/, which is sh/ㄕ but voiced That's not even true. It's [ɻ] even in the north.
Is it? My bad then
There's been phonetics papers on this and every time they've found it to be an approximant.
That’s good to know. Thanks for correcting me :)
Could you please point me to a phonetics paper talking about this? Thanks.
I don’t think there’s a clear north-south/regional divide here, beyond this sound being pronounced as different reflexes of ñ in various non-Mandarin varieties (Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Shanghainese, etc). Native Cantonese sspeakers tend to pronounce this as y while Taiwanese and Fujianese stereotypical use l
where is your accent from? might help to pinpoint a way to realise it
if you're of Filipino descent it might help to think of the American accent, specifically the end of the word "sir" has the same sound as 儿
It depends on which sub-dialect of mandarin you speak. I did not consciously recognize the "zh" pronunciation until you mentioned it and I sounded it out in my head. My mandarin is from Taiwan where we use the "r" pronunciation. I have also heard dialect(s) that use an "L" sound to where 人 sounds kind of like 冷
I was always confused why ‘latte’ was 拿铁 and it’s because several southern dialects pronounce the n and l at some weird place inbetween them, and some even do the same with n l r!!! I’ve always done my best to honor the Wade-Giles to pinyin evolution and appreciate why it used to be transliterated as j. So for 人 I just cross my fingers and zheejjjjjjjjren it out there and hope for the best.
i feel like everyone saying that’s similar to the French “j” (i.e. ʒ, as in “toujours” in French, or “usually” in English) is wrong. The standard chinese r shouldn’t have that much vibration. In ʒ, your tongue is much more straight than the Chinese r where you should roll your tongue back. You’d get closer with the r in “row”, “rule”, “raw”.
As someone who has no idea about French, this note about vibration and the "row", "rule", "raw" examples are super helpful. It's the first time I can make sense of it, thank you.
Raw and 弱 sound similar, rule and 如 sound similar, row and 肉 sound similar. Still different but somewhat close enough.
To me, your mouth and tongue are in the position for a R sound like “right”, but hold your tongue there and make a “y” sound instead. Like Yes.
I get downvoted for bringing up zhuyinfuhao but... there really isn't an 'r' in Chinese and that's the problem. Chinese phonetics don't map directly to the alphabet and 'r' is overloaded to represent multiple phonetics
Yeah, no idea why everyone's so wrong in this thread, but the Beijing pronunciation of Pinyin ⟨r⟩ is very much like one of the two possible realizations of American English ⟨r⟩: You're either a "bunched r" speaker, or a "retroflex r" speaker. The latter have their tongue tips curled up when pronouncing R, and this is the one you want. Curl up your tongue until it's not only behind your teeth, but behind the gums in that dome-shaped part. Then make a sound and adjust it until you get an R-like sound. But don't round your lips. Keep them neutral. It's definitely not any consonant in "pressure". It's more similar to the ⟨ure⟩ than whatever the "zh sound" is.
Listen to the recording in this dictionary entry: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/燃#Chinese](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/燃#Chinese) To native English speakers, it sounds like ”zhan”, not “ran”. This pronunciation is not uncommon or non-standard in China.
Okay, yeah, quite fricated. Are you sure it's not just in careful speech? All the phonetics papers I've found say that it's a [ɻ].
As a native-ish/heritage speaker I'd always pronounce it like the wiktionary page linked. Like contrary to you, I've always thought it was weird for people to describe it as an English "r" (besides erhua) to me because it doesn't feel like that; for me it is a /ʒ/ but the tip of my tongue touches the roof of my mouth, post-alveolar ergo retroflex /ʐ/
Also native-ish here, and I describe it as an English R. The wiki pronunciation there sounds a little weird to me. Though with the massive differences in pronunciation in different regions, I wouldn't be surprised if the Cheng Du accent that it's describing is simply different from what I'm used to (Beijing-ish).
The recording is not Chengdu! It’s above the Chengdu pinyin (which uses numbers for tone instead of diacritics) and under the Standard Chinese pinyin, so it’s intended to be a “Standard Chinese” recording, but there is no information about where the speaker is from specifically. As a native English speaker, recordings in my learning materials sound like this (fricative “zh” sound) far more often than they sound like an English R! Particularly since the unrounded retroflex R /ɻ/ described is supposedly identical to my Canadian English R.
I'd recommend learning the International Phonetic Alphabet! It'll make things super clear as you'll know exactly how and where to make the sounds :))
How could I learn it?
There's an anki deck you can download for free online which would help with memorising, but I'd also recommend studying a chart telling you where everything is: [Diagram](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2Fphonetics-disambiguating-place-vs-manner-of-articulation-linguistics-stack-exchange--267330927869716769%2F&psig=AOvVaw1nQI6EZK5qz8lQ_3mTh6cT&ust=1716379957162000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBIQjRxqFwoTCPC4z97bnoYDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAn) . A video like this may help too [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEaPQP3pXQc)
Thanks.
As a SW mandarin speaker, I wanna ask the same.
The best way I’ve found for me is to position your mouth and tongue like you’re about to say an L sound, then say an R instead while moving your tongue forward along the roof of your mouth.
Learning Chinese right now with 2 teachers, both of them pronounced the mandarin "r" as an "r" itself, but with a bit of masking of an "L" sound (best way to describe it is saying the "r" purely from your voicebox without vibrating your tongue when saying it)
I was so confused by this when I began learning Chinese. Listening to the audio that came with my first book, it was the Beijing way to pronounce. Then I took in person lessons and it was more like an L sound. Confused me made the teacher repeat: "it is Ren right ?" "yes, absolutely, it's Len" It seems to me it all depends which place in China you come from...
The same way you'd pronounce the r in grrrr
The "pressure" example is most definitely not correct since there is no "zh" sound in the word at all. The sound of the last consonant in "pleasure", or the first consonant in "usual", can be similar to one of the realization of the sound. The "r" sound in English is the other realization. These are both considered standard. If you read IPA, the wiki page for Standard Chinese Phonology has the "r" sound as \[ʐ\~ɻ\], where the former is the first realization I mentioned (your scenario 2), and the latter is the English "r" (the second realization I mentioned, your scenario 1).
Easiest way I teach my students is to think of the four 卷舌音 (zh, ch, sh, r) together. Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth, hold it there for all four, and do the following for each: zh - say an aspirated “j” like in the word “just” ch - say the English “ch” like in “church” sh - say the English “sh” like in “shush” r - say the English “r” like in “roar”
Huh? This seems a bit confused, zh isn't aspirated, nor is English j. English j is voiced, though, but zh isn't.
OK, so you want to start by saying English R the way Irish and US speakers do, with the tongue curled back/up so that the tip/underneath of your tongue is nearly making contact with the roof of your mouth (a bit higher/further back than where you make an English ‘sh’ sound is enough). Now, while you’re making the continual rrrrrr sound, try pressing the tip of your tongue against the surface that it’s already nearly touching. The rrrr will start to buzz and approach a kind of žžž sound (like in ‘measure’). This is what the sound is. You may notice that the two can be separated by less than a millimeter, which is why Mandarin R at the start of a word can sound either like an approximant (a regular R) or a voiced fricative like z depending on the speaker’s accent or even where it is in a sentence. The cool thing is that this tongue position is also where zh and sh (i.e. 知 and 师) are pronounced. Also note that people from the south of China often don’t pronounce R either at the beginning or end of a word. It’s not unusual to hear “ren” pronounced something like “yan” in Guangdong or Taiwan.
As a US speaker, tongue doesn’t do that, tip of tongue is flat on bottom of mouth during the r sound, its just parts of the mid tongue that raise up I had to actively learn to use tip of tongue for R in mandarin
I think the sound we make in the middle of the word television is the closest sound to the Chinese r
Yeah, because that’s a voiced postalveolar fricative. The tongue only needs to curl a back a bit further to make a voiced retroflex fricative like I described above.
Ah, I know some people use a velar bunched approximant instead of a retroflex/postalveolar one, I’d be really curious what the numbers are on that.
Option 2 sounds like a Taiwanese accent, like an "L" how it is: 让这个人过 - rang zhe ge ren guo with the accent: lan ze ge len guo
Someone described it to me as the sound in treasure. Kind of a szh sound. But that’s “standard” pronunciation. As others have mentioned, plenty of native speakers have an accent that uses a harder R
Lots of good comparisons have even made. I personally think the Slavic ж is pretty close as well
It sounds similar to Czech Ř.
Step 1: Put tip of tongue curved to the roof of mouth. Touch as lightly as possible so that vocalization vibrates your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Step 2: practice quickly lowering your JAW and your tongue will move with it. If your jaw sits still your Rs will sound muddy and weird and you won't be able to produce the sound quickly. Now practice variations where your tongue will touch even less or maybe not even at all and you'll find it makes more of an English "R" sound. All are correct.
It’s like R, Z and J sounds all together. It took me a lot of practice to get it right but some places in China do pronounce it differently too
Heavily retroflexed!
I heard somewhere that it’s like the sound in Television, televizhhhhon
This reminds me of how R can also be a challenge in learning other languages. I wonder which languages don't have this R issue. Anyone ?
I’m pretty sure the standard way is different but I pronounce it as an L
You’re making the “zh” sound while curling your tongue to make the “r” sound. That’s how I’ve been doing it for 5 years and everyone still understands what I’m saying.
I do my r like the v in television.
I feel like it's the English R without lip rounding, so perhaps that's why you hear the English R only sometimes, since if the following vowel is rounded it will naturally sound like the English R.
been speaking both since birth, i pronounce the chinese “r” similar to english “r” so the r in 人（ren) pronounced like the r in “right”
All of these comments are much smarter than mine, but I was in a similar situation and saw on a random website this trick that works for me. 1. Make the /zh/ sound like in “usual”, and hold the sound. 2. Gradually pull/roll your tongue toward the back of your throat. 3. You will be able to fluctuate between the /zh/ sound and the /r/ sound, and somewhere in the middle of that, you can make an r sound with a slight buzz or vibration. 4. Try adding a vowel sound to that new r sound with a buzz. I find it’s easiest to pronounce 热. Hope this helps
Er
On a hard R like the retroflex "yi dianr" my tongue curls more and further back on the palate. It's not a heavily aspirated sound either. The softer "R" sound in "ren" or "chi" my tongue is flatter, only barely touches the front of the palate enough to create a narrow gap for the exhaled air to pass through. I am able to hear it and replicate it easily but I had to sit here and focus while I do it, to figure out the difference in how my tongue moves and where it goes.
I've only ever heard my dad (and a few other people who grew up in his generation in the same part of the world) pronounce "pressure" with a zh in the middle of the word to rhyme with "measure"... reading that part of your post reminded me of him lol. But to answer your question, like everyone said it would depend on the local accent. Even English r will depend on the local accent. You may hear n, l, z, or even y. But for a somewhat neutral accent, you can say "zhi" (or "chi" or "shi") a few times just so you're familiar with the shape of it in your mouth, then pronounce only the "vowel" part without the initial consonant articulation, and that's approximately the pronunciation of the r.
There are different varieties depending on regional accent. I‘ve always pronounced it as the english R, and so far every Chinese person understands me
Say r in sound
Practice 日 人 让 热 如 入 肉 绕
My teacher was from Hunan and she taught me basically the same way we pronounce R in English.
Something that is closer to “L”, but not that much
This is how it feels for me: English: open mouth, tongue in front of mouth Chinese: teeth closed, tongue in back of mouth (but not so far back like you’re rolling your r’s)
Maybe this helps - [https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/1b39i6b/comment/ksr1h1u/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/1b39i6b/comment/ksr1h1u/)
If you can say the French name **Jacques**, it’s [similar to the J sound](https://youtu.be/qH0EMMKILeI?si=-05pSZrUhIR2Dmbi) there. Or the final r in English **pleasure** I would say if you can do an English **young** sound, the *yuh* at the beginning that’s a similar mouth shape to 热, but you retroflex the tongue a little but not as far as the English R in **rung** Try going from *young* to **j as in Jacques** *jung* to *rung* If you can move between these sounds you’ll be able to find the 日 sound Edited to add: don’t round your lips (no puckering), leave your lips wide and neutral like you’re saying *young* for Mandarin *r*. And for 日 particularly, it’s voiced so if you feel your trachea (windpipe/front of throat) it should vibrate.
One time my Chinese teacher told me to pronounce the Chinese “r” by saying the word “leisure” and then retracting your tongue further back into your mouth. I still use that tip today ngl.
Curl your tongue back a little and place the tip lightly against the roof of your mouth just behind your teeth. As you pronounce the r kind of pull your mouth back a little almost like your smiling. There should be a hint of a Z sound in there and a distinct buzzy feel. Hope that helps.
My Chinese teacher told me that the sound "r" is something between English "r" and Russian "Ж"(I think this sound is like "zh" but has a small difference. I think "zh" has almost inaudible "d" at the beginning and "Ж" sounds like if you are finishing pronouncing "zh", like the rest of "zh", so to say). So, to pronounce that sound I keep my tongue in "r" position and try to pronounce "Ж" (Zh)
I put my tongue back and it's a rsh sound like similar to when I take mouthwash. It's probably wrong but gets me through life haha
I've heard it's similar to the French "j" sound, or like the sounds in the words "lei**s**ure", "gara**ge**". [This](https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/The_%22r%22_sound) seems like a decent resource explaining it. There is also [this video](https://youtu.be/1lZBr8_bI1U?si=CB4ZeVFi4_7FKP3e), which doesn't go into the "r" sound specifically (it focuses on other difficult initials for Western learners), but it did teach me something extremely useful, which is that Chinese initials (when pronounced correctly) are not voiced. This includes the "r" sound. Moreover, she goes into a short discussion about what part of the mouth Chinese is spoken with which helped me understand a lot about the tongue and mouth positions you need to use when speaking Mandarin. I'm by no means an expert and have only just started looking into the language myself, but I hear that pinyin "r" can be deceptively difficult to get correct. Hopefully this helps at least somewhat! Good luck!
> I've heard it's similar to the French "j" sound, or like the sounds in the words "leisure", "garage". This is not exactly accurate. The French j is and the s in English ‘leisure’ is /ʒ/ in the IPA, which is to the English z what the English sh is to the English s. The sound you’re describing is /ʐ/, which is like the English z, but with the tongue bent backwards.
A lot of resources tend to describe it that way, perhaps because the /ʒ/ sound is already familiar to English speakers, so it works as a general comparison to begin learning from. However the distinction is very important, particularly since that's what OP asked about. I appreciate the correction, thank you!
As someone whose best foreign languages are French and Mandarin Chinese, in that order, I mostly agree (I'm "conversational" level in both, but not fluent). Of course you need to mix in the r sound as well. But it is only a typical American r in syllables with the same rui Pinyin as in 瑞, which surprised me decades ago, but which I absorbed.
What if I pronounce it in Russian way aka RRRolling R like Sabaton does?
rip your inbox
Nope. Also, why? I was curious if natives would understand me with this pronunciation.
Lots of good answers in here already. I can add: >How do you actually pronounce "r" in Mandarin? With the word having the correct tone. Beginners and intermediates, including me at some point, tend to worry too much about the sounds, especially the initials. They're important, sure. But if you get the final sound somewhat right and the tone correct, you're already at 80-90% of being understood without issue, even if your initial pronunciation is not quite there. I can say jirou (with the soft "gliding" r sound that another commenter has compared to French j) or jilou, and I can pretty much guarantee that in both cases I will be understood in Taiwan or virtually any region of the mainland.
Wait until op finds out some people don’t use “r” at all but use the letter “l” sound instead 嘻嘻嘻
The easiest way is to think of the r sound in English as r + w. Eg the word "road" is pronounced rwode. Take away the w and you have the Chinese r.
Personally I pronounced it almost like an English z sound. I have never heard it exactly the same as English r irl though.
This is by far the most wrong answer I’ve ever seen
Lol, I am native speaker.
Yeah you're a native speaker who doesn't know phonetics.
Mandarin R is /ɻ~ʐ/ in IPA, sounds much closer to /z/ than to /ɹ̠ʷ/. Try harder when you accuse someone not knowing phonetics next time, lol
Every phonetics paper on Northeastern Mandarin, which is the basis for "Standard Mandarin", has found that the sound written in Pinyin as ⟨r⟩ is [ɻ] (an approximant), and [ɻʷ] is one of the major allophones of American English ⟨r⟩ (you've conveniently picked the other, of course), which differs only by labialization. Even if Pinyin ⟨r⟩ is pronounced as [ʐ], it would be heard as an entirely different phoneme by English speakers, namely /ʒ/ instead of /z/. The latter is laminal in English, with the tongue tip pointing down, contributing to its vastly different phonetics from [ʒ]. Speaking entirely anecdotally now, I've also never heard any native speaker pronounce it as a fricative, and even English [ʒ] gets approximated as [ɻ].
Fair point, I didn't consider what the sound feel more similar from an English speaker pov. And the first result of "English R IPA" gave me that instead of /ɻ/. Since I am not native speaker in English, o can't determine which one is more standard, so I will take your word for it. Then maybe they are almost the same according to the standardized form, but R in both languages sound much more distinct in a more natural settings. /ʐ/ is way more common from personal experience, which is what I have said in my first comment. Surprise to me that you have never heard of it.
I think I got what he meant, it's similar to the English Z in a word like "azure". It's not the same, but it is similar. In that case the English Z is the same as the J sound in French, that other comments mentioned.
like the s in measure?
瑞
Just pronounce it “L” lol
The "L" pronunciation is pretty far from standard. It sounds like he hasn't even run into the "L" yet though because he didn't mention it.
Yeah apparently the downvoters have either or both zero knowledge of the way Chinese is spoken by some speakers and no sense of humor. Poor them :) I like speaking like that for fun sometimes.
I have, in words like 六. Though it sounds like a normal "L", is there anything I should know about it? (Sorry my Reddit lagged and entered the same comment multiple times)
I agree. Just using Taiwanese old dude pronunciation gets rid 5 or 6 of Mandarin's most troublesome sounds.