Learning Chinese tones is a pain for you? Hey, that is not true! It’s actually a pain for your teacher, not you. OK, back to the topic. “Tones” this word may not exist in your language, but it is definitely in your language.
Now try to say “Mom, where are you?” and “Mom! stop saying that!” Do you say these two “mom” in the same pitch? I believe the answer is no. The first sentence of mom is the second tone in Chinese, and the second one is the fourth tone in Chinese.
Yes, Chinese tones are all about pitches. And the pitch of each Chinese tone is relative to your vocal range, so you don’t need to speak exactly like your Chinese friends or teachers.
Don’t want to read? Check my Insta for 1 min video instruction.
1st tone I 。1st tone II 。2nd tone 。3rd tone 。
3rd+3rd 。4th tone 。neutral tone
The first tone
You can imagine 1 to 5 is Do to Sol. The first tone is Sol to Sol (one beat).
If you are not good at singing then please try to think when you say “Happy Birthday”, the “ha” is the first tone.
ā 。mā 。tī 。gū 。zhōng 。tāng
。 。
The second tone
The second tone starts lower, from Mi to Sol (one beat).
If you are not good at singing then please try to think when you say “What!?”, the “wha” is the second tone.
á 。má 。tí 。guó 。cóng 。táng 。féng
The third tone
The third one is a little tricky. It looks like you need to pronounce Re-Do-Fa in one beat, but if you do so it will be very rush even for a native speaker. So what we do is:
- In a sentence, the third tone is pronounced as a low tone (Re to Do)
.
yǔtiān 。zhǒnglèi 。hēshuǐma 。chīdiǎnxīn 。bùxiězì
2. In isolation, the third tone is usually pronounced as a falling-rising tone (Re to Do to Fa)
You can also try to think when you say, “Did you?” the “did” is the third tone. For the beginner learners, I strongly recommend you nod your head when you practice pronouncing it.
.
ǎ 。mǎ 。tǐ 。hǎo 。zǒng 。duǒ
Special rule：When the third tone links to another third tone, the first third tone change into a second tone.
.
mǎtǒng 。xǐshǒu 。shuǐjiǎo 。yǔsǎn 。fěnbǐ 。nǐhǎo 。xiǎogǒu
The fourth tone
The fourth tone starts from high pitch to low pitch (Sol to Do). It sounds a little bit like you are angry, so don’t forget to smile when you speak Chinese:) The same idea, if you think it is hard, try to say Shit! the “shi” is the fourth tone.
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à 。mà 。tì 。fèi 。biàn 。suàn 。guì
The neutral tone
The last one is very short. It only pronounce a quarter beat like when you say A bike that “a” is a neutral tone.
Some textbooks mentioned a neutral tone is not a fixed tone. It changes the pitches depending on the previous tone, but honestly, the neutral tone is too light and short in a conversation. Besides, no matter how you pronounce the neutral tone (higher or lower), it won’t change the meaning of a word. So you really don’t need to bother yourself memorizing all these neutral tone details.
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a 。ma 。de 。zi 。ge 。le 。ba
