Learning Chinese - Lesson 1 - Tone

Tone is very important in Chinese. There are 5 tones in Chinese and they are as follows:

* high level – first tone
* rising – second tone
* falling rising – third tone
* falling – fourth tone
* neutral - no tone

Many characters have the same sound so to differentiate the words tone is also used. This is called Pin Yin.

Pin Yin uses either numbers or tone marks to indicate the tones. Here is the word ‘ma’ with tone marks:

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

The tones are used to determine the meaning of a word. So mǎ (horse) is very different from mā (mother).

Here is a video on pronunciation Click here