Learn Chinese Tones Lesson 2

This is the second of five free lessons about Mandarin Chinese tones.

Lesson 2
Combinations of Tones?

As you already know, Chinese is a monosyllabic language. Anyway, the majority of Chinese words are composed of two characters, that is two syllables.

While in Lesson 1 you learned how to pronounce single characters with the correct tone, now please pay attention to how two characters are pronounced together. In this lesson you are going to learn how to pronounce with the correct tones about one fourth of all Chinese words!

The Neutral Tone The pronunciation of the neutral tone must be short and weak. It's used when pronouncing a few single-character words and at the end of a lot of two-characters words.

Stress Marks Chinese dictionaries use four different stress marks to indicate the character's tone (there's no stress mark for the neutral tone). Tone 1st Stress Mark     Example of Pin Yin mā Tone 2nd Stress Mark / Example of Pin Yin má Tone 3rd Stress Mark V Example of Pin Yin mǎ Tone 4th Stress Mark \ Example of Pin Yin mà Tone neutral Stress Mark Example of Pin Yin ma All five "ma" together

So, let's start with your first 5 combinations of tones: first-first, first-second, first-third, first-fourth and first-neutral.

Words Starting With The First Tone

Please save the following mp3 files on your computer.

The meaning of what you say is not important now. Please concentrate only on the sounds and try to repeat them with the same pitch variation.

Click here for lesson 3 on Chinese tones.

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