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Getting started with Chinese 1

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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:

Figure 1 Four tones

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Diagram showing the different tones in Mandarin Chinese with an explanation by its side which reads:

The 1st tone is a high level tone, the 2nd rises from medium to high, the 3rd falls from low medium to low and then rises to high, and the 4th falls from high to low (see Figure 3). The tone marks are put over the single finals a, e, i, o, u and ü. There are some syllables that do not have a tone mark (e.g. some particle words or last syllable in a word), and they are called ‘neutral tone’. The neutral tone is low and flat with no stress.

Figure 1 Four tones

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