How to pronounce Dao De Jing, Laozi and the key words

Dao De Jing (道德经)

1. 道dào4th tone: falling
2. 德dé2nd tone: rising
3. 经jīng1st tone: high, level

dào sounds like “dow” in “down”, said with a falling tone, as if giving a firm answer. dé is not “day”: the vowel is the “uh” of “duh”, rising as in a question. jīng starts like the “j” of “jeep” and ends like “sing”, held high and level. It is never a hard “g”, and never “ching”.

The first word of the book is 道, here at the start of chapter 1. Play the clip to hear the character alone, or the line:

德 opens chapter 38, the first chapter of the second part:

经, “classic”, is part of the title only: the book never says it, so the recitation has no 经 to play.

Dao or Tao?

Both spellings write the same word, 道. “Tao” comes from the Wade-Giles romanisation of the nineteenth century, where an unmarked t stands for the sound pinyin writes d, and t’ with an apostrophe for pinyin t. The apostrophe was often dropped in print, and English readers took the t at face value. So “Tao” was always meant to sound like “dow”. Pinyin, the official romanisation since 1958 and the ISO standard, writes what is said: Dao. The same goes for Te (pinyin De) and Ching (pinyin Jing).

Laozi (老子)

1. 老lǎo3rd tone: low, dipping
2. 子zǐ3rd tone: low, dipping

lǎo rhymes with “how”, low and dipping. zǐ is a “dz” followed by a buzz, as if you held the z; there is no real vowel after it. Two third tones in a row change in speech: the first rises, so the name sounds like láo zǐ. Lao Tzu is the Wade-Giles spelling of the same sounds. The name means “Old Master”: 老子.

The book never names its author, so there is no recitation of 老子 to play.

Wu wei (无为)

1. 无wú2nd tone: rising
2. 为wéi2nd tone: rising

“woo way”, both rising. Chapter 37 says it outright:

Ziran (自然)

1. 自zì4th tone: falling
2. 然rán2nd tone: rising

zì is the buzzing “dz” of zǐ above, falling. rán begins with the pinyin r, close to the “s” of “pleasure”, then “ahn”, rising. From chapter 25:

Characters even native readers misread

Some characters of the book are rare, and some change their reading with their sense. Three that catch readers out:

牝 pìn, the female of an animal, in chapter 6:

恶 is è “bad” in most of the book, but wù “to loathe” when it is a verb, as in chapter 24:

被 is pī “to wear”, not the modern bèi, in chapter 70:

How the readings here are decided

The pinyin on this site is checked line by line against the sense of each line, and the recitation follows it. Where commentators read a character two ways, the site follows the reading its translation takes. Every line has its pinyin above the characters; tap a word for its reading and meaning.