The Four Mandarin Chinese Tones

November 24, 2018 Best Mandarin Tutor 4 tones, pinyin

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.

Four Tones

There are four tones in Mandarin Chinese, which are:

First tone: a level and higher pitch
Second tone: rising, start from a lower pitch and end at a slightly higher pitch
Third tone: falling rising, start at a neutral tone then dip to a lower pitch before ending at a higher pitch

Fourth tone: falling, start the syllable at a slightly higher than neutral pitch then go quickly and strongly downwards

Reading and Writing Tones

Pinyin uses either numbers or tone marks to indicate the tones. Here is the word ‘ma’ with numbers and then tone marks:

First tone: ma1 or mā
Second tone: ma2 or má
Third tone: ma3 or mǎ
Fourth tone: ma4 or mà

Note that there is also a neutral tone in Mandarin. It’s not considered a separate tone, but it is an unaccented syllable. For example, 嗎 / 吗 (ma) or 麼 / 么 (me).