How to Remember Chinese Tone Order
There are four tones in Chinese, they’re numbered from one to four, and Chinese speakers often refer to them as “first tone, second tone, etc.” To review, the first tone is flat , the second rises , the third dips , and the fourth falls .
Okay… that’s swell and all, but how do you remember which one is first and which one is fourth? It’s easy to get them mixed up and makes reading typed-out pinyin a pain (wo3 yao4 gen1 ni3 shuo1 hua4).
Then one day, I wrote the tone markings side by side: . Revelation time! They looked like a minus M, or -M. The M can even stand for Mandarin. The minus stands for… look, I’m not going to do all the work. Now, whenever I forget if the falling tone is second or fourth, I just have to think of it as it fits into the -M formula.
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Responses to “How to Remember Chinese Tone Order”
Comments RSS Feed – All Commentscr7cr8 — 6 March 2010 @ 4:44 pm
Clark, frankly speaking, if you keep the current pace of your Chinese learning, you would not have any significant achievements in terms of the verbal cognition of the language.
(You have been to China for more than a year, and you are still at the level of the recognition and memorizing of the 4 tones.)
4 tones are just 4 tones, nothing more else,similar the to the alphabet in English, since you have remembered thousands of English words, what is the big deal? Plus, China has its unique china price in the world, and the mandarin is part of the China, it should be reasonably CHEAP to learn. (Feel free to ask any Chinese-Americans around you if you have any questions, I am 100% sure it would be absolutely FREE, you can ask me as well through the comments.)
Ask yourself, how many of those kids you taught while you were in China whose English are better than your Chinese ? (I felt shame and lame of you !)
Clark — 7 March 2010 @ 12:49 am
I have to take offense to that, because, frankly speaking, I already know the tones really well. This post was not for my benefit but for the benefit of people who are struggling with them. I’m not talking about how to pronounce tones, anyway. This is about remembering which is first, second, third, and fourth. For example, everybody knows the names of the planets, but do we remember the order? That’s why we invent little jingles to help us.
As for this “China price” that you often allude to, it’s important to note that foreign teachers are there to teach English, not learn Chinese, and trying to do both is very exhausting. Don’t be so hard on someone for not picking it up fast enough. Also, in my experience, native Chinese speakers who aren’t teachers by profession are not great teachers at all.
If you want to compare teachers to students, though, every class of mine had five great students and five terrible students. Everyone else was passable, and that’s about where my Chinese was before I left. Yeah, I could have learned more, but given the circumstances, I think I did okay.
cr7cr8 — 7 March 2010 @ 2:34 am
My God. I found out that this is the best way for me to learn English (may be for you as well), Because when someone was involved in a debate, she is highly motivated to pick up those sharp and aggressive words to delivery the strong sense formed in her mind, this could be a reason to explain why the f-word never lost its translation. And I just have learned the new word “elude” in your refutation (’refutation’ as well by writing these, thank you :) ). Sadly, there is hardly any public debates due to its political system in my country, which turns out tough language, poorly used. I watched our foreign minister’s answering in an official news-express today , guess what, I can easily understand the English translation regardless of whether listening to the original Chinese version , but I always feel difficult to understand the words from an American politician’s mouth. once again, American English is hard to learn well.
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The following are the PIN-YIN translation of your refutation:
cr7cr8 — 7 March 2010 @ 2:57 am
Wǒ juéde hěn yǒu bìyào duì cǐ biǎoshì bùmǎn, yīnwèi, lǎoshí shuō, wǒ yǐ jìn zhīdào hěn hǎo de liǎojiě le nàxiē shēngdiào, fā zhège tiē bìng bùshì wèi wǒ zìjǐ de hǎochù, ér shì gěi nàxiē zàixué shēngdiào réngrán yǒu hěn dà kùnnán deRén. Bùguǎn zěnyàng, wǒ méiyǒu zài tánlùn rúhé fā pīnyīn de shēngdiào. Zhè zhǐshì guānyú rúhé jì zhù dì yīshēng, dì èr shēng, dì sān shēng, hé dì sì shēng. Lìrú, měi gèrén dōu zhīdào xǔduō xīngqiú de míngzì, dànshì wǒmen jìde zhù tāmen de shùnxù ma? Nà jiùshì wèishéme wǒmen fāmíng liǎo xiǎo kǒujué lái bāngzhù wǒmen.
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This is just for the first paragraph, unless you want, I am not going to do the rest because I am feeling I am doing something that nobody cares right now.
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