{"id":484,"date":"2010-03-27T21:55:27","date_gmt":"2010-03-27T19:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/?p=484"},"modified":"2010-03-27T22:28:25","modified_gmt":"2010-03-27T20:28:25","slug":"learn-the-chinese-tones-in-1-minute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/learn-the-chinese-tones-in-1-minute\/","title":{"rendered":"Learn The Chinese Tones in 1 Minute!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have ever read about the Chinese language, you will probably know that all the variations of Chinese have tones. Tones are ways to pronounce words so for example if you say d\u0101 (with an elongated sound) it means “to hang” while d\u00e1 (with a rising sound) means “to answer” even though it would feel like the same word in English. All Chinese words have a tone (in one way or another)! Mandarin<\/strong> (the most-widely used variation of Chinese) has four tones + one neutral one. In this post, I’m going to attempt to teach you how to pronounce all the 4+1 Chinese tones in a minute. We only have a minute. Let’s start. We’ll be using ma<\/strong> for an example but know that this can be used for any Chinese word (da, ren… you name it) to have different meanings.<\/p>\n

0. The Neutral Tone<\/h2>\n

Easy: simply say the word like you say it in English. For example, say ma<\/strong>. Done!<\/p>\n

1. The First Tone: aaaaa<\/h2>\n

Imagine you’re at the dentist’s for a checkup. He begins by telling you to open your mouth widely and say aaaaaaaaaaaa<\/strong>. Well, in Chinese, it’s the first tone and it’s written like in m\u0101<\/strong>. Pronounce any word like this and you got the tone!<\/p>\n

2. The Second Tone: now???<\/h2>\n

Imagine a friend tells you to get ready because you’re going for the trip. Imagine you say in surprise: Now?<\/strong> I thought we were going to go tomorrow. Now?<\/strong>. That’s the second Chinese tone, which sounds just like in a question. Now?<\/strong> It would be written as m\u00e1<\/strong> to indicate that it is the rising tone.<\/p>\n

3. The Third Tone: iiin!oOOOUUTTT?<\/h2>\n

Imagine you have a shovel in your hands and you are digging the ground. You dig a bit iin and then you lift the shovel to get the soil out. You go: Iin! oOUT? Iin!OOUT? Iiin!oOOOUT?<\/strong> This is the most unusual tone. If you still have problems with this, just know that it is a combination of the fourth and the second tones, the second one being longer. It goes like m\u01ce<\/strong> to show that it goes down and up.<\/p>\n

4. The Fourth Tone: STOP!<\/h2>\n

STOP!<\/strong> No more learning! This is our tone. Imagine you are walking on the street when a pickpocket nicks your purse from your pocket and runs. You start running after him and scream abruptly: STOP!<\/strong> This is our last tone, the falling one. It would be written as m\u00e0<\/strong> to show that it falls down.<\/p>\n

REVISION<\/h2>\n

To solidify this info, here’s an audio file with the four tones of the word ma<\/strong> pronounced:
\nThe four tones m\u0101 m\u00e1 m\u01ce m\u00e0 pronounced (.ogg audio file)<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s a chart for you with all four tones:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Our mission is done. You can listen to some Chinese and see if you can identify the tones. It gets easier with time.<\/p>\n

This post was inspired by the Mandarin Chinese course following the Michel Thomas Method (I also used some examples from it). They not only have similar instructions, they also teach hand signatures to memorize the tones easier, as well as grammar. Check them out if you are interested in learning more spoken Mandarin.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you have ever read about the Chinese language, you will probably know that all the variations of Chinese have tones. Tones are ways to pronounce words so for example if you say d\u0101 (with an elongated sound) it means “to hang” while d\u00e1 (with a rising sound) means “to answer” even though it would feel like the same word in English. All Chinese words have a tone (in one way or another)! Mandarin (the most-widely used variation of Chinese) has four tones + one neutral one. In this post, I’m going to attempt to teach you how to pronounce all the 4+1 Chinese tones in a minute. Let’s start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[39,87,86,84,85],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions\/502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}