CHI 152: Beginning Intensive Chinese II: Pronunciation

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Introduction of Chinese Pinyin Tones

Tones are an important part of Chinese, which are the variation of pitch within a syllable and are used to distinguish words with same Pinyin. There are basiclly four tones and one neutral tone in Mandarin Chinese. The following chart illustates the four basic tones.

Basic Four Tone Marks:

Tones	Tone Marks	Descriptons	Examples
1st tone		阴平 high level	dā 耷(drop down)
2nd tone		阳平 high rising	dá 答(answer)
3rd tone		上声 low dipping	dǎ 打(hit)
4th tone		去声 high falling	dà 大(big)

The Neutral Tone, occurs on stressless syllables and has a pitch entirely determined by the tones of adjacent syllables. However, a neutral will never act as the starting tone. Neutral tones are usually unmarked. For example, the red parts of the following table are neutral tones.

Tone Mark Placement

The tone mark is placed over the vowel if there is only one vowel letter.

If there are two vowels, the tone mark is placed on the first, unless the this first vowel is i or u.

If there are three vowels in a syllable, the tone mark is placed on the middle one.

When the tone mark is place on i, the small dot is removed.