Mandarin Pronunciation and Tones

Pronunciation - 發音 (fā yīn)

One of the biggest differences between chinese and european languages is the tones used to pronounce words. In english, tones denote whether something is a question, a command, or a general statement. English tones can be used anywhere in the sentence, without changing the meaning of the sentence too much, though it may freak out the listener a little. In mandarin, each word has a tone. If you do not use the right tone with a word in mandarin, it changes the meaning of the word.

A tone is applied separately to each syllable in a word while prounouncing it. It is a little bit like singing the word. Researchers have found that in addition to using the speech center of the brain, mandarin speakers also use the part of the brain normally active while listening to music. For more information, see http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002864.html.

• Tonality in Mandarin Speach
• Tone Sandhi
• The Retroflex Ending "-r"
• The Syllables of Mandarin
• Writing Tones

Tonality - There is a tone to every Chinese syllable

There are four tones in mandarin, and a fifth neutral tone. These tones dictate how the pitch of the voice is sounded by the speaker.

1. In the first tone, the pitch of your voice remains constant and slightly high through the syllable.
   (listen to mā)
2. In the second tone, the pitch of your voice raises slightly while pronouncing the syllable.
   (listen to má)
3. In the third tone, the pitch of your voice goes down, and then goes back up in the same syllable.
   (listen to mǎ)
4. In the forth tone, the pitch of your voice goes down sharply during the syllable.
   (listen to mà)
5. In the neutral tone, the pitch of your voice depends upon the word you are saying, but is normally said more breifly and softly than the other syllables. It kind of takes on a middle-pitch, similar to the first tone, but lower in pitch and shorter in duration.
   (listen to ma)

The diagram below shows how the four written tones look, with time going from left to right and pitch going higher from bottom to top.

Tone Sandhi

There is an exception to written tones:

• If two third-tone (ˇ) syllables are spoken in succession, then the first tone becomes the second-tone (ˊ). This is because having two third-tone (ˇ) syllables right next to each other just sounds a little silly. This tone change is called tone sandhi in linguistics.

For example, using the tone sandhi exception on hěn hǎo (which means "very good"), will become spoken as hén hǎo.

The Retroflex Ending "-r"

Chinese-speakers have different dialects. However, one characteristic stands out above the rest - the retroflex ending "-r". The retroflex ending "-r" occures when a syllable ends with an "r", such as in zài nǎr. The "-r" is outspoken on "-r" ending syllables in mainland China. In Taiwan, on the other hand, the "-r" is replaced with an "-n". For example, diǎr becomes diǎn.

The sounds of Mandarin (phonemes)

Chinese-speakers have a different set of sounds than English-speakers. In Chinese, there are more than 1000 monosyllabic phonemes, whereas in English, there are just over 40. This is slightly misleading however, because in chinese, every possible syllable in the entire language is counted as a phoneme.

The bopomofo represents the sounds of the Chinese language very well. You could say that each bopomofo symbol was a phoneme, as phonemes are defined in English.

• Bopomofo Spelling for Chinese Characters - you can click on each symbol and listen to the bopomofo pronunciation. The "sh", "ch", "jh" and "zh" sounds are the ones that get confusing.

Pinyin maps directly to the monosyllabic words of Chinese, so there are slightly more than 1000 pinyin spellings with tones. Please read more about pinyin here:

• Pinyin Spelling for Chinese Characters

For transcription from pinyin to bopomofo (MPS), or, for bopomofo (MPS) to pinyin, see:

• MPS/Pinyin Transcription Chart

Writing Tones in Chinese

Both the bopomofo (MPS) and pinyin explicitly show tones. Tones may be denoted by number or by accent characters. Sometimes, these tones are written immediately after the syllable, and sometimes they are written over the syllable.

Tone	Tone Marks		Description	Pitch	Tone-graph
	Bopomofo	Pinyin
1st tone		ˉ	high level	55:
2nd tone	ˊ	ˊ	high rising	35:
3rd tone	ˇ	ˇ	falling and rising	214:
4th tone	ˋ	ˋ	falling (from high to low)	51:
Neutral tone*	•		no set pitch**

^* The neutral tone may be denoted by either the number 0 or by the number 5.

^** The neutral tone has no set pitch. The tone of it depends upon the syllable preceding it.