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Chinese
Tones.
Speaking Chinese - Tone is the
variation of pitch, it can be rising, falling or continuing. Chinese is
a tone language. In Mandarin, there are four distinct tones, five if
you count the neutral Chinese tone.
Since there are
only about 430 basic monosyllables which can be combined to make words
using Chinese tones, the use of tones is one way of substantially increasing the
number of available monosyllables.
Every syllable in
isolation has its definite tone. So syllables with different tones may
mean different things although they share the same initial and final.
For example: 买 (
mǎi  ) pronounced with the third tone means "buy", but 卖 ( mài ) pronounced with the fourth tone means "sell".
Look at the table
below for detailed explanation about the four Chinese tones and listen to their
different pronunciations:
|
Name
|
Pitch-Graph
(tone mark)
|
Example
( a )
|
Pronunciation
|
|
The first
tone
|
|
|
|
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The second
tone
|
|
|
|
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The third
tone
|
|
|
|
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The fourth
tone
|
|
|
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To illustrate
these four Chinese tones better, let us first draw a short vertical line to
represent the pitch variation within an average person's voice range:
The
tonemark is placed over the vowel if there is only one vowel, e.g. wǒ,
or on the main vowel of a syllable where they are two or three vowels,
e.g. hǎo.
First tone is a high
level tone and is represented by tonemark "  ". Pitch it at level 5 and keep it at the same
level for a while.
Second tone is a
high rising tone and is represented by tonemark"  " . Pitch it at about level 3 and raise it
quickly.
Third tone is a
falling and rising tone and is represented by tonemark "  " . Start below level 3 and let it drop nearly to
level 1 and then rise to somewhere near 2.5.
Fourth tone is a
falling tone and is represented by tonemark " ` ". It falls from level 5 right to level 1.
The
diagram below helps visualize the pitches of the four different
tones:
Neutral Tone
Some
syllables in Chinese Tones are in the neutral tone or toneless, i.e. they are
pronounced weakly, like unstressed syllables in English.
If
there is no tone mark over the vowel, it means it is a neutral tone.
Neutral
tones are used in the following cases:
-
Particles
are always in neutral tone, such as 了 (le), 的 (de)
-
The second
syllable in some compound words is sometimes toneless: for example, 我们 (wǒ men ) (we or us)
-
A second
half of a reduplicated word is often in neutral tone:
for example, 妈妈 ( mā ma ) ( mother ), 爸爸 ( bà ba ) ( father )
-
The measure
word 个 ( gè ) when it is not emphasized: for example, 三个月 (sān
ge yuè  )
( three months)
Chinese Tones
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