Tones
Standard Chinese, like all Chinese dialects, is a tonal language. This means that tones, just like consonants and vowels, are used to distinguish words from each other. Many non-native Chinese speakers have difficulties mastering the tones of each character, but correct tonal pronunciation is essential for intelligibility because of the vast number of words in the language that only differ by tone (i.e. are minimal pairs with respect to tone). Statistically, tones are as important as vowels in Standard Chinese. The following are the 4 tones of Standard Chinese:
| Tone name | Yin Ping | Yang Ping | Shang | Qu |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tone number | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Pinyin diacritic | ā | á | ǎ | à |
| Tone letter | ˥˥ (55) | ˧˥ (35) | ˨˩, ˨˩˦ (21, 214) | ˥˩ (51) |
| IPA diacritic | á | ǎ | à, a᷉ | â |
- First tone, or high-level tone (陰平/阴平 yīnpíng, literal meaning: dark level):
- a steady high sound, as if it were being sung instead of spoken.
- Second tone, or rising tone (陽平/阳平 yángpíng, literal meaning: light level), or more specifically, high-rising:
- is a sound that rises from mid-level tone to high (e.g., What?!)
- Third tone, low or dipping tone (上 shǎng, literal meaning: "rising"):
- has a mid-low to low descent; if at the end of a sentence or before a pause, it is then followed by a rising pitch. Between other tones it may simply be low.
- Fourth tone, falling tone, or high-falling (去 qù, literal meaning: "departing"):
- features a sharp fall from high to low, and is a shorter tone, similar to curt commands. (e.g., Stop!)
- The syllable "ma" pronounced with the four main tones
Read more about this topic: Standard Chinese Phonology
Famous quotes containing the word tones:
“And this mighty master of the organ of language, who knew its every stop and pipe, who could awaken at will the thin silver tones of its slenderest reeds or the solemn cadence of its deepest thunder, who could make it sing like a flute or roar like a cataract, he was born into a country without literature.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, as sand eddies in a whirlwind.”
—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
“‘Tis not that thy mien is stately,
‘Tis not that thy tones are soft;”
—Charles Stuart Calverley (1831–1884)