Author : 谢淑枝
Thursday, August 22, 2019
If you’ve recently wanted to start studying Mandarin Chinese as a second language because China has become prominent in global affairs, you’re definitely not alone. Demand for people who speak Mandarin has increased these past few years.
First of all, you must know that there are a number of different Chinese languages — Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. — these are all part of the same language family, but they’re quite different verbally but interestingly they use the same writing system that we call hànzì (汉字).Although we don’t know precisely how many characters in existence, most estimates there are more than 50.000 Chinese characters.
After reading all that facts you might confused where to begin. So, we are going to start from basic pronunciation. Mandarin is a tonal language, so different sound can have multiple meanings depending on the tone it’s pronounced. Take a look at the chart below.
Or, you can watch this short video to listen how to pronounce each tone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnwOEBISYqU
Let’s break down all four tones and neutral tones.
First Tones : The first tone it starts high and maintains it for the whole process (rather monotone)
Second Tones : The second tone it starts in middle and goes up to high (English speaker usually associate this with rising pitch when asking question)
Third Tones : The third tone starts mid-low, dips down and then rise to mid-high
Fourth Tones : The fourth tones starts high and then immediately goes down
Last but not least are neutral tones or in Mandarin qīngshēng (轻声). These usually occurs in the second syllable of two-syllable word or between two stressed syllables or even in phrases, but never at the beginning of a word. These will sound light, vague, unstressed and short. The general rule for neutral tone is that neutral tones always lower than the preceding tone, except for third tone, in which case the neutral tone is higher. Take a look at chat below for neutral tones changes for each tones and some example for neutral tones.
Here a video to practice neutral tones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNtrohDzFz8
Last one is tone rules, there are certain circumstances which a Mandarin word normal tone will change to a different tone. There are three main tone change rules that every Mandarin learner needs to know, and mind you that sometimes even the tone marks in pinyin not reflected how to read it. Remember, normally when you write pinyin you do not write the tone change.
When followed by a fourth tone, bù (不) changes to second tone (bú).
When followed by a fourth tone, yī (一) changes to second tone (yí). When followed by other tone, yī (一) changes to fourth tone (yì).
There are some exceptions for this one, when yī (一) appears as a number, larger number, date, address, it is pronounced without tone change.
When a third tone is followed by another third tone in two-syllable word, the first third tone changes to a second tone.
That’s all for Mandarin tones. Hope this help making learn Mandarin, always check out other website for learning Mandarin (will leave some of them below). Best of luck! 加油!
Learning Chinese Online Page - a great website with lots of free online resources;
http://www.nciku.com/Online English Chinese Dictionary, Learn Chinese Mandarin Online - a website with Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionary with Chinese handwriting recognition, pinyin translation, audio pronunciation, personalized vocab lists, picture etc.
Free online mandarin audio courses - offers some basic Chinese dialogues and resources, learn Chinese pinyin, slang, calligraphy, and some other Chinese basic knowledge or skills.
BBC - Languages - Real Chinese - BBC Chinese learning program;
Learning Chinese 学汉语 - China.org.cn - a great website to learn Chinese;
MDBG English to Chinese dictionary - an online English-Chinese dictionary and also allow people to take quiz or create flashcards;
Log in - Memrise - an online language learning website which helps learning Chinese characters;
Livemocha - online language learning community;
Chinese Garden - a good website for beginner students;
Learn Chinese · Study Chinese · ChinesePod - a Chinese learning website with classes, news and podcast;
Teaching and Learning Resources - Chinese learning resources and games.