Pinyin Syllable
Chinese characters pronounced zhong
Learn common Chinese characters pronounced zhong, including 中 zhōng, 种 zhǒng, 重 zhòng, 众 zhòng, 终 zhōng. Compare tones, meanings, traditional forms, words…
How to Pronounce This Syllable
To say zhong, set the tongue tip back for the retroflex zh, then run into ong without a pause — one Mandarin block, with the tone laid over it.
Initial zh
Put the tongue slightly curled back. Do not pronounce it like English “j”.
Final ong
ong sounds close to “ung”, not English “ong”.
Study Tip
Start with the most common characters (中 zhōng, 种 zhǒng, 重 zhòng, 众 zhòng, 终 zhōng) and lock in their tones. 10 common characters share the sound zhong, so lean on words to tell the rest apart.
Learn by Tone
zhong turns up here with 3 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: 中, 终, 钟… (5 in total). Lock this tone in your ear before the meaning.
3rd tone
Taking the 3rd tone here: 种, 肿 (2 in total). Lock this tone in your ear before the meaning.
4th tone
Taking the 4th tone here: 重, 众, 仲 (3 in total). Lock this tone in your ear before the meaning.
Common Words With This Sound
Seeing zhong inside whole words makes it clear which character is meant — here are common ones.
Characters
10 common characters in this group.