2 Tones
Chinese is a tonal language. In Mandarin Chinese, there are four tones (five if you include the neutral tone). Tones are marked in pinyin as follows:
First listen to the four tones pronounced with the inital ‘m’ and final ‘a’. Open the transcript to listen to it alongside the pinyin.
Download this audio clip.Audio player: l197-pronunciation-10a.mp3
Transcript
mā
má
mǎ
mà
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).
Listen to them again, this time together with the neutral tone:
Download this audio clip.Audio player: l197-pronunciation-10b.mp3
Transcript
mā
má
mǎ
mà
ma
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).