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.
māma 妈妈 | yéye 爷爷 | nǎinai 奶奶 | bàba 爸爸 |
gēge 哥哥 | wáwa 娃娃 | jiějie 姐姐 | mèimei 妹妹 |
zhuōzi 桌子 | fángzi 房子 | běnzi 本子 | jìngzi 镜子 |
jīnzi 金子 | yínzi 银子 | zǎoshang 早上 | dìshang 地上 |
dīngzi 钉子 | miánhua 棉花 | yǐngzi 影子 | yànzi 燕子 |
Tone Mark Placement
The tone mark is placed over the vowel if there is only one vowel letter.
bù |
nà | tè |
If there are two vowels, the tone mark is placed on the first, unless the this first vowel is i or u.
kǎi |
hēi | qiú | tuī |
If there are three vowels in a syllable, the tone mark is placed on the middle one.
qióng |
zhuāng | chuán |
When the tone mark is place on i, the small dot is removed.
yí |
lín | huī |