{"id":14768,"date":"2020-03-01T17:10:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-01T17:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/spoken-chinese\/the-four-mandarin-chinese-tones\/"},"modified":"2020-03-01T17:10:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-01T17:10:30","slug":"the-four-mandarin-chinese-tones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/the-four-mandarin-chinese-tones\/","title":{"rendered":"The Four Mandarin Chinese Tones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  \tTones are an essential part of proper pronunciation. In Mandarin Chinese, many characters have the same sound. Therefore tones are necessary when speaking Chinese in order to differentiate words from each other.<\/p>\n<p>  \tFOUR TONES<br \/>  \tThere are four tones in Mandarin Chinese, which are:<\/p>\n<p>  \tFirst tone: a level and higher pitch<br \/>  \tSecond tone: rising, start from a lower pitch and end at a slightly higher pitch<br \/>  \tThird tone: falling rising, start at a neutral tone then dip to a lower pitch before ending at a higher pitch<\/p>\n<p>  \tFourth tone: falling, start the syllable at a slightly higher than neutral pitch then go quickly and strongly downwards<br \/>  \tREADING AND WRITING TONES<br \/>  \tPinyin uses either numbers or tone marks to indicate the tones. Here is the word &lsquo;ma&rsquo; with numbers and then tone marks:<\/p>\n<p>  \tFirst tone: ma1 or m\u0101<br \/>  \tSecond tone: ma2 or m&aacute;<br \/>  \tThird tone: ma3 or m\u01ce<br \/>  \tFourth tone: ma4 or m&agrave;<br \/>  \tNote that there is also a neutral tone in Mandarin. It&#39;s not considered a separate tone, but it is an unaccented syllable. For example, \u55ce \/ \u5417 (ma) or \u9ebc \/ \u4e48 (me).<\/p>\n<p>  \tPRONUNCIATION TIPS<br \/>  \tAs mentioned earlier, tones are used to determine which Mandarin Chinese word is being implied. For example, the meaning of m\u01ce (horse) is very different from m\u0101 (mother).<\/p>\n<p>  \tThus when learning new vocabulary, it is really important to practice both the pronunciation of the word and its tone. The wrong tones can change the meaning of your sentences.<\/p>\n<p>  \tThe following table of tones has sound clips which allow you to hear the tones.<\/p>\n<p>  \tListen to each tone and try to mimic it as closely as possible.<\/p>\n<p>  \tPinyin Chinese Character Meaning Sound Clip<br \/>  \tm\u0101 \u5abd (trad) \/ \u5988 (simp) mother audio<br \/>  \tm&aacute;<\/p>\n<p>  \t\u9ebb hemp audio<br \/>  \tm\u01ce \u99ac \/ \u9a6c horse audio<br \/>  \tm&agrave; \u7f75 \/ \u9a82&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"chine-tie-zi-nei-rong-zhi-hou\" id=\"chine-2695588556\"><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-1889418300638825\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display:block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-1889418300638825\" \ndata-ad-slot=\"7273022922\" \ndata-ad-layout-key=\"-gw-3+1f-3d+2z\"\ndata-ad-format=\"fluid\"><\/ins>\n<script> \n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); \n<\/script>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tones are an essential part of proper pronunciation. In Mandarin Chinese, many characters have the same sound. Therefore tones are necessary when speaking Chinese in order to differentiate words from each other.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2871,2853],"tags":[2406,302,151,157,264,114,71],"class_list":["post-14768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brief-intro","category-spoken-chinese","tag-in-chinese-word","tag-in-mandarin","tag-mandarin","tag-mandarin-chinese","tag-one-in-mandarin","tag-pronunciation","tag-vocabulary"],"views":316,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}