# Pronunciation: 学生



## piano0011

hey guys!

I am just wondering, to pronounce the word xue2sheng1, does it sound like shui2 sheng1 or x(where)2 sheng1, if that makes sense? I am trying to find the english sound that is similar to that word.


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## hongover

Here is my best try: sh-your 2 (pronounce 'your' in British rather than American way)


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## piano0011

or does it almost sound like xie3= write but with a xwie2 sound?


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## hongover

piano0011 said:


> or does it almost sound like xie3= write but with a xwie2 sound?


I think you might be right. It is closer to xwie2. But the "w" there plays a huge role, which makes it not sound like xie3.


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## piano0011

so it doesn't sound anything at all like shui2 as in shui3= water sound?


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## hongover

piano0011 said:


> so it doesn't sound anything at all like shui2 as in shui3= water sound?


I would say that the "i" in shui2 marks the salient difference between shui2 and xue2. So, I would not say that they sound alike each other.


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## Skatinginbc

It sounds like the shwe- in the name Shweta Tiwari.
It is different from the shwei in feng shwei (or spelled as feng shui).
Obviously, the difference between shwe and shwei is the absence of /i/ in shwe.


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## piano0011

Does it sound closer to the shui3 as in water?


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## Skatinginbc

Your question is like asking: Does shade sound like shed?


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## SuperXW

I think e in xue is like /e/ as in "egg". That's the final vowel of this sound.


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## fyl

1. Are the correct and accurate sounds of "xue2" and "shui2" similar?
Absolutely not. They have almost no similarity.

2. Is there an inaccurate sound pronounced by a non-native speakers close to both "xue2" and "shui2"?
Yes. I can imagine in my mind why you think they are similar. An inaccurate sound of "shui2" can be like "xue2" in some way.

For the initial, the English "sh" is somewhat in the middle of Pinyin "sh" and Pinyin "x". So you may think the English "sh" is similar to both Pinyin "sh" and Pinyin "x". But to Mandarin speakers, we don't have the English "sh" in our mother tongue (and that can be a difficult sound for us) and we distinguish the Pinyin "sh" and Pinyin "x" very clearly.
For the rest of the syllables, there are similar stories.

3. Can I say the inaccurate "shui2" in places of "xue2" or vice versa?
Depends on how well you want to learn Chinese. If you are a famous person and you are going to give a public speech in China that starts with a couple of Chinese words as the greetings, you can do that. If you want to have real conversations, you should try to distinguish them.


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## M Mira

Just pointing out the obvious: the u in xue is actually pronounced as an ü, so it's quite different from the u in shui.


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