Lesson 1.2: Tones

Chinese is a tonal language, which means that words have a set tone, or pitch pattern, that is part of their correct pronunciation. There are lots of different words in Chinese that are pronounced the same except for their tone, and it’s important to learn to distinguish them when speaking and listening.

The Four Tones

For the most part, each character has one of four tones. The four tones are:

• First tone: high and flat
  Example: 嗨 (hāi, hi); 猫 (māo, cat); 一 (yī, one)
• Second tone: rising from mid-pitch to high
  Example: 十 (shí, ten); 头 (tóu, head); 元 (yuán, Yuan; Chinese currency)
• Third tone: dipping from mid-pitch to low to mid-pitch
  Example: 我 (wǒ, I); 好 (hǎo, good); 狗 (gǒu, dog)
• Fourth tone: quickly falling from high to low
  Example: 大 (dà, big); 四 (sì, four); 字 (zì, character)

The Neutral Tone

There’s also a neutral tone, which is brief and relaxed. It isn’t quite considered a tone because hardly any characters are in the neutral tone by default. Instead, it’s sort of a “mode” that a character that would normally have a tone can be put in for particular words. When a character is repeated twice, it’s common for the second one to be in the neutral tone.

The Third-Tone Rule

Finally, there’s a very important pronunciation rule called the third-tone rule. It states that, if two third-tone characters border each other, the first one is always pronounced in the second tone instead.