Chinese Pronunciation

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Once again, before you get confused, it's important to know from the start that the pinyin e is actually pronounced in several distinct ways, depending on what other sounds it is combined with. When e is a syllable all by itself, or when e simply combines with an initial consonant, it sounds as if you started out with an [ʊ] sound (as in the English word "put"), and then ended with sort of an [ʌ] sound (as in the English slang word "duh.") This pronunciation applies to the following syllables of this section: e, de, te, ne, le.

For the -n and -ng final consonants, the pronunciation of e stays roughly the same, with just the addition of the consonant sounds at the end. That gives you the following syllables: ben, beng, pen, peng, men, meng, fen, feng, deng, teng, nen, neng, leng. (Notice which possible syllables are not included. Those sounds do not exist in Mandarin, except for den, which is quite rare.)

The other sound that the Mandarin e makes can be heard in ei. Mandarin's ei sounds like the "ei" in the English word "vein." This is a common vowel sound you will hear in the following syllables: bei, pei, mei, fei, dei, nei, lei.

Finally, the Mandarin e can make another separate sound in the syllable er. The syllable er sounds more or less like the English word "are", although the r sound is the Mandarin r we mentioned earlier.

Listen to the sounds of this section and try repeating them by clicking on the syllables below: