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tips for Chinese learners£ºthe four tones
Many Chinese learners will get confused by the four tones£¬which is very important for u to speak it like natives.Mandarin Chinese has four pitched tones and a "toneless" tone.
The reason for having these tones is probably that the Chinese language has very few possible syllables -- approximately 400 -- while English has about 12,000. For this reason, there may be more homophonic words , words with the same sound expressing different meanings, in Chinese than in most other languages. Apparently tones help the relatively small number of syllables to multiply and thereby alleviate but not completely solve the problem. Learning Chinese in context, therefore, is very important.
Now you can understand how the Chinese use only one syllable "da" and yet can tell the difference betwee "to hang over something" ( da1 ), "to answer" (da2), "to hit" (da3), and "big" (da4). Yes, the secret lies in the tones. The numbers after each of the syllables indicates the tone. In normal text this is indicated as . In the diagram below you can see the tones.
Tone Mark Description
1st ¨¡ High and level.
2nd ¨¢ Starts medium then rises to the top.
3rd ¨£ Starts low, dips to the bottom, then
rises toward the top.
4th ¨¤ Starts at the top, then falls sharp and strong to the bottom.
Neutral Flat, with no emphasis.
U can contact me for more£»£©
N¨« h¨£o! ÄãºÃ©u Hello!
W¨¯ sh¨¬¡ l¨£osh¨©£©. ÎÒÊÇ¡£¨ÀÏʦ£©¡£
I am ¡£¨a teacher£©.
Z¨¤iji¨¤n! ÔÙ¼û©u Good-bye!
Xi¨¨xi¨¨! лл©u Thank you!
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Language pair: Chinese, Mandarin; English
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