Pinyin Syllable
Chinese characters pronounced zhao
Learn common Chinese characters pronounced zhao, including 照 zhào, 找 zhǎo, 朝 cháo / zhāo, 招 zhāo, 赵 zhào. Compare tones, meanings, traditional forms, words…
How to Pronounce This Syllable
For zhao, curl the tongue back on zh and join it smoothly to ao; keep it as a single syllable and hold the tone steady.
Initial zh
Put the tongue slightly curled back. Do not pronounce it like English “j”.
Final ao
Settle the final ao into a steady mouth shape first, then lay the tone on top.
Study Tip
Start with the most common characters (照 zhào, 找 zhǎo, 朝 cháo / zhāo, 招 zhāo, 赵 zhào) and lock in their tones. 12 common characters share the sound zhao, so lean on words to tell the rest apart.
Learn by Tone
zhao turns up here with 4 different tones; a change of tone usually means a different character, so the groups below are split by tone.
1st tone
Taking the 1st tone here: 招, 昭 (2 in total). Lock this tone in your ear before the meaning.
2nd tone
Taking the 2nd tone here: 朝, 嘲 (2 in total). Lock this tone in your ear before the meaning.
3rd tone
Taking the 3rd tone here: 找, 爪, 沼 (3 in total). Lock this tone in your ear before the meaning.
4th tone
Taking the 4th tone here: 照, 赵, 召… (5 in total). Lock this tone in your ear before the meaning.
Common Words With This Sound
Seeing zhao inside whole words makes it clear which character is meant — here are common ones.
Characters
12 common characters in this group.