A question about One

trevorb
 April 20, 2010, 07:04 PM posted in I Have a Question

Okay so I was reading in a book about the tone changes to Yi.

It seems that if Yi precedes a forth tone then it becomes a second.

but that if it precedes  a first,second or third tone it becomes a forth tone.

This would appear to mean that the only place you may see Yi with its original tone is when used in a string of numbers, and even then it may be substituted with Yao.  Is this correct? 

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suansuanru
 April 24, 2010, 05:53 AM

Yes! And Yi is used like this in order to make it sounds more beautiful. Do you think so?Or are they just some strange  grammar which is hard to remember?

And when you see "一"appears in a name,then it would pronounce "Yi1" .For example,we say"yi1xiu1"(一休，a famous japanese) instead of "yi4xiu1".

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trevorb
 April 26, 2010, 12:43 PM

Actually I do think so, and I realise that having  learnt from podcast I use these rules in pronunciation  without thinking about it.. ah maybe I  am making progress!

I was curious as to why 一  had a native tone at all if it really only has a tone formula I based on the other tones around it.   I suspect its because   common use has caused it to become more naturally used this way.