The ten tones of Standard Mandarin

simonpettersson

January 08, 2010, 11:16 AM posted in General Discussion

You thought Mandarin had only five tones, including the neutral one? Well, you're wrong. There are, in fact, ten distinctly different tones in Standard Mandarin. ChinesePod just doesn't tell you about some of them (!). That's because they're not represented in the Pinyin, since they're predictable. That is, you can figure out which of the ten tones to use based on the five tone categories in Pinyin.

I've sort of picked most of this up as I went along, but looking into it more thoroughly, I found one tone that I hadn't picked up and that helped me a lot, so evidently, there's something to be said about spelling this out.

The neutral tones
Yes, plural. There are four of them, in fact. Which one it is doesn't need to be spelled out in Pinyin, as it's wholly predictable based on the previous tone. But fact remains that they are four different tones. In the order from highest to lowest, the neutral tones follow the third, second, first and fourth, respectively. So 桌子 (zhuōzi, table) has a lower neutral tone than that of 嗓子 (sǎngzi, throat).

The half-tones
So that's eight tones now (okay, you could claim that the high neutral tone is the same tone as the first tone, only shorter, but we're going for an even number here, so I'm counting it separately). What about the last two? Well, they're the half-tones. There are two of them, namely the half third and the half fourth.

The half third tone is a third tone that doesn't rise again after falling. It's used when the third tone is followed by a first, second or fourth tone (since it turns into a second tone when followed by another third). For example, in the word 好多 (hǎoduō, very much) uses a half third tone. Pronouncing it with a full third tone will sound a bit weird.

Then there's the half fourth tone. I hadn't really thought about this one before I read about it, so I'm really glad I discovered it. Makes pronounciation make more sense to me. You know how when a fourth tone (or any tone, really) character is redoubled, the second one goes neutral? Like in 谢谢 (xièxie, thanks). One of my earlier ChinesePod memories is of Ken saying this is because it sounds "choppy" to pronounce both the fourth tones. Makes sense, right? But then there are words with two fourth tones that aren't reduplicated, like 再见 (zàijiàn, thanks). You don't make the second one a neutral tone, so doesn't it sound choppy? It did when I said it. Then I read about half-tones and I understood that the first of the two is actually a half fourth tone. It's cut in the middle, sinking down just halfways before starting with the second character. So if a fourth tone goes in register from 5 to 1, a half fourth tone goes from 5 to 3. In practice, this sounds like you're de-emphasising the 再 and emphasising the 见, but what's really going on is a half tone.

That's it
So there you have it. The ten tones of Standard Mandarin. Besides improving your pronounciation, this can make you sound even more impressive when describing Mandarin to someone who doesn't study it.

"Yeah, it's kind of hard. It has ten different tones."

bababardwan

January 08, 2010, 12:05 PM

Yeah,interesting post Simon.

In the order from highest to lowest, the neutral tones follow the third, second, first and fourth, respectively

..I think it would be interesting looking at one of those graphic recordings of native speach and observe this.It's obviously measurable.I think there would be a kind of logic in why this is so...well,not really a logic but more related to the smooth flow of speech and also making the transition between tones both smooth but at the same time noticeable.I think this could freak out some newbies or those contemplating taking up Chinese,but in reality I think that the 5 tones we are taught get you in the ball park,and lots of mimicry and careful listening gets you to fine tune the rest.Overanalysing might cause some people to overthink and complicate what otherwise may just come with practice.Just my two fen.But it's very interesting to hear this.Do you have any sources that officially recognise Mandarin as having 10 tones? I wonder how many this would make Cantonese as having? 哎哟

simonpettersson

Well, the Wikipedia page on Standard Madarin discusses the four neutral tones and the half third. It doesn't cover the half fourth, though. I got that from this webpage.

bababardwan

thanks for that.It seems to refer to these as allotones.

changye

January 08, 2010, 02:08 PM

"Too short" sounds childlish, but basically people prefer concise Japanese. That said, it's very easy to write a loooooooong "never-ending" sentence in Japanese, hehe.

waiguoren

January 08, 2010, 12:33 PM

The first time I heard of this 'half tone' business was the brief period I hired a tutor (that lasted for about 2 months, but thought CPod to be a more viable alternative).

The only thing I remember was that "Beijing isn't really a third tone" - 'it's half third tone'. Like you said, when a third is followed by a first (didn't know what the deal was when followed by second or fourth) it becomes 'half third tone'.

And still can't wrap my head around the others (oh, I get the 'neutral' tone followed by the 4th). I'm going to keep believing there are just four tones. It's easier that way.

sebire

January 08, 2010, 12:36 PM

Surely it's just easier not to worry too much about tones rather than try to analyse them scientifically. Listen. Repeat. Listen. Repeat. Sorted.

The only problem is when you learn tones from a Taiwanese person. I still say 妈妈 with two first tones.

simonpettersson

Well, yes, you learn through mimicry. But we all know what the third tone should sound like, and if you're not aware of the half-tone, you might do yourself a disservice by pronouncing full third tones all the time. This sort of stuff is good because it tells you where to look. See for example hamshank's comment below. I think this is helpful to some people, but it should of course not be a basis for producing or practicing the sounds. That basis should always be mimicry.

The simple "Listen. Repeat." approach has been responsible for some terrible accents in the past, mostly because a difference you can't hear is a difference you can't pronounce. That's where you get people who think that the Pinyin 'B' is the same as the English 'B' and pronounce it accordingly. They don't know that there's a difference and thus fall back on old speech patterns. Telling them that there is in fact a difference might sort that out. That's how it was for me, anyway.

hamshank

January 08, 2010, 12:38 PM

Thanks Simon...The explanation on the half 3rd tone (eg. 喜歡 xǐhaūn) was really usefull...I hear it all the time and never twigged...Just thought my listening skill was not good enough.

waiguoren

January 08, 2010, 12:38 PM

My guess is 27

simonpettersson

January 08, 2010, 12:48 PM

Well, the Wikipedia page on Standard Madarin discusses the four neutral tones and the half third. It doesn't cover the half fourth, though. I got that from this webpage.

changye

January 08, 2010, 12:16 PM

Gee, even standard Mandarin has ten tones. I wonder how many tones Cantonese actually has?

waiguoren

My guess is 27

hkboy

Chuck Norris could remember all those tones and still kick you 27 times.

bababardwan

..evoking 27 tones from the recipient..hmm,very instructive

hkboy

of course not 27 tones but who cares.

changye

January 08, 2010, 01:09 PM

I hear that Middle Chinese had eight tones, 平声(阴/阳)，上声（阴/阳），去声（阴/阳） and 入声（阴/阳）, and tones in Cantonese are based on this ancient tone system.

simonpettersson

Tones in Mandarin are also based on this system, though. Mandarin has kept some of the differences (aspirated vs. unaspirated, I think) that Cantonese has lost, and vice versa. They say Cantonese is closer to Middle Chinese than Mandarin is, though.

As someone who has recently taken up Cantonese (it'd be a shame to waste a great opportunity for immersion in Foshan) I can say that Cantonese has six tones at the moment (compared to Mandarin's five, not to the ten), but they seem to be reducing. They used to be seven some time ago, I think (the high falling tone has disappeared), and Macau already only has five.

Don't take any of this as coming from an authority, though.

xiaophil

Changye, my teacher told me that Chinese people didnt' even know there were tones in their language until foreigners pointed it out to them. To me it sounded like they were probably the Jesuits, but who knows. Anyway, you seem to be someone who would know something about this. If you do, please do ;).

simonpettersson

The obsession with classifying and examining language is a very old Western thing, going back to Greece and Rome and their grammarians. Probably because Ancient Greek and Latin both have horribly complex grammar, and the Romans in particular loved really long and complicated sentences. I'm guessing there was never such an obsession in China, so nobody really thought about the tones, just like they "weren't aware" of the fact that their language was a Subject-Verb-Object language.

xiaophil

Actually Simon, today another teacher told me that in Chinese the more concise the better. English has gravitated more in that direction, but as I am sure you are well aware, in the past, just like the Romans and the Greeks, the longer the sentence the better. I bet though, the discovery of the tones wasn't due to an in depth examination. It came about because some foreigner tried to say 马 and 妈 without the tones and the Chinese side insisted that they should sound different.

changye

After all, Chinese was a kind of "koine" or pidgin language in ancient China, which was used as a common language for many ethnic groups in this large country, and this is one of the reasons that Chinese is not grammatically so complicated. "The more concise the better" is very true for Chinese.