# Does one have to memorize the tone of every character?



## Pedrovski

Hello,

I started learning Mandarin a while back, having learnt to read, write and speak at present some 200 characters (and their pinyin equivalent). 
My question is, does one really have to memorize the tones of each and every character?

Thanks in advance.


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## quelquechose

Yes. It's a lot of work, but there are a very large number of words which are only distinguished by differences in tone, so unless your tones are correct it can be very difficult (or impossible) to understand what you're saying. If it's any consolation, it gets easier the more you learn. It's still a lot of work, but I can learn to write charaters in about 1/4 as long as it took at first.


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## vince

Yes, the tone affects the meaning of the character. It's an essential part of the pronunciation of a word. Imagine if you cut off the last syllable of every word when speaking Portuguese and tried to get people to understand you. Speaking Chinese languages (except Wu) without tones is like doing that.


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## boardslide315

Any basic phrase should be understood even if you are way off on the tones; if you say ni2 hao3 instead of ni3 hao3 to your Chinese delivery man, I think he will understand that you don't really mean to say "mud is good."

On the other end, if you need to use a word with 50 or more meanings tied to it (i. e., "xi") you will want to do your best with the tone--although, with words like that I imagine even natives have trouble.


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## silverpixie

Hi, Pedrovski,
I think you don't need to worry about the "tones" too much, because Chinese people can understand you according to the whole sentence you've said. 

And actually , it makes no differences to say ni2 hao3 or ni3 hao3, , because when you speak fast, ni3 hao3 will become ni2 hao3. Many other words are just like that.


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## Kassikakk

silverpixie said:


> And actually , it makes no differences to say ni2 hao3 or ni3 hao3, , because when you speak fast, ni3 hao3 will become ni2 hao3.



In fact, I think, there is a rule that, within a meaningful chunk of characters, if there are many 3rd tone characters in a row, only the last one will be pronounced 3rd tone, all the others will become 2nd tone. So, for example, you would say wo2 ye2 hen2 hao3 (我也很好), even though all the individual characters are third tone. Hence ni2 hao3 is correct, too.

Of course, that's just a pronounciation guide, you'll still have to remember each character's original tone.


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## palomnik

My advice is just close your eyes to the difficulty, shamelessly mimic your teacher or recording, and don't try to think things through too much.  Before long the tones will become second nature to you.

Really.


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## Qcumber

Kassikakk said:


> In fact, I think, there is a rule that, within a meaningful chunk of characters, if there are many 3rd tone characters in a row, only the last one will be pronounced 3rd tone, all the others will become 2nd tone. So, for example, you would say wo2 ye2 hen2 hao3 (我也很好), even though all the individual characters are third tone. Hence ni2 hao3 is correct, too.
> 
> Of course, that's just a pronounciation guide, you'll still have to remember each character's original tone.


Isn't this called "tone sanddhi"?


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## Lugubert

Qcumber said:


> Isn't this called "tone sanddhi"?


Correct.
 
Some syllables are more sensitive than others to tone. Your honored (瑰 guī) country vs. Your damned (鬼 guì) country, 买 maĭ ’buy’ vs. 卖 maì ’sell’. I recommend you to be careful about tones in the beginning. It is much harder to correct bad habits/errors later on.


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## silverpixie

Kassikakk said:


> In fact, I think, there is a rule that, within a meaningful chunk of characters, if there are many 3rd tone characters in a row, only the last one will be pronounced 3rd tone, all the others will become 2nd tone. So, for example, you would say wo2 ye2 hen2 hao3 (我也很好), even though all the individual characters are third tone. Hence ni2 hao3 is correct, too.


 
I think the rule works in the words of two characters-when both are third tone originally, then the first one can be pronounced as sencond tone, so in the case of wo ye hen hao (我也很好), you can regard "wo ye" and "hen hao" as respective groups, so that you pronounce wo2 ye3 hen2 hao3, that sounds more natural than wo2 ye2 hen2 hao3


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## kareno999

Kassikakk said:


> In fact, I think, there is a rule that, within a meaningful chunk of characters, if there are many 3rd tone characters in a row, only the last one will be pronounced 3rd tone, all the others will become 2nd tone. So, for example, you would say wo2 ye2 hen2 hao3 (我也很好), even though all the individual characters are third tone. Hence ni2 hao3 is correct, too.
> 
> Of course, that's just a pronounciation guide, you'll still have to remember each character's original tone.


我也很好should be pronounced wo2 ye3 hen2 hao3. This is quite a difficult subject.


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## Leopold

From what I know when two or more 3rd tones are together all of them but the last one are pronounced as a 2nd tone.

(ˇ+)ˇ+ˇ = (´+)´+ˇ

On the other hand the 3rd tone is only pronounced as such at the end of a period. If followed by any tone different than 3rd it should be pronounced as a *half 3rd tone*. 

Actually I'm still having a hard time trying to read correctly mostly because of this (and because it is really hard at first). A half third tone should be, as far as I know, just the downwards part of a 3rd tone (which starts lower than a 4th tone and lasts longer).

However not thinking much about it and just repeating and hearing really helps. But you must study too.


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## Spectre scolaire

Judging from the title of this link, your question is not very precise, but if --




			
				Pedrovski said:
			
		

> My question is, does one really have to memorize the tones of each and every character?


 
-- my answer would be:

Chinese, in casu Mandarin, has an extremely “narrow” phonetic inventory and exhibits a correspondingly “narrow” phonological reality. Considering the number of around 90 million syllables that human language can cough up, Mandarin can only produce around 420. It is therefore necessary to compensate with some additional distinguishing features. Here the tonemes come in. 

Browsing through a larger Chinese dictionary, however, you will discover that this is far from enough. Written Chinese lives a life of its own being able to distinguish between a plethora of homonyms – also homonyms regarding the toneme! So, the characters make up for any alleged “poverty” of the spoken tongue.

PS: The spoken word is the primary manifestation of language. The writing of it is an altogether secondary thing – contrary to what most Chinese might think...


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## Ivan Tan

Think about it this way. There are a large number of non-native Mandarin speaker Chinese cannot grasp their tones properly, however their Mandarin is still perfectly understandable. As long as your mispronunciations are not that many, you do not need to worry much about the tones, but rather grammar.  My two cents.


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## Qcumber

I have the impression the tone pattern of a given Chinese word belongs to an intonative pattern that is more important than the tones of its syllables. Has this been exploited by manuals? Are there manuals that give lists of current words, every list being characterized by an tonal intonative pattern?


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## GeChang

*Hi,

I've noticed that there was a quite robust discussion previously regarding the 3rd. tone in Pinyin, I'd like to add a little more information to help those people who would like to speak standard chinese with correction pronunciation. Please see one of my previous posts below:

However, in terms of pronunciation, (esp. for those who are learning chinese and who are aiming at improving the clarity of your pronunciation) there are some general rules about the 3rd. tone.

The 3rd. tone is a changeable tone in the following situations:

 1) When two 3rd. tones come together, the first one should be changed into a 2nd. tone. e.g. n**ĭhǎo (你好) should be pronounced as: ní**hǎo. jiěguǒ (结果) should be pronounced as: jiéguǒ.
 
2) When a 3rd. tone is followed by a 1st., 2nd., 4th. or neutral tone, the 3rd. tone should be pronounced as a low and sustained 3rd. tone. (stay in the lower part of your voice and don't move the sound up) e.g. jǐnzhāng (紧张), jǐngchá (警察), liǎobùqǐ (了不起),zǒuba (走吧).
 
The 3rd. tone remains the 3rd. tone when only under the following situations:

 1) When a 3rd. tone is on its own, e.g. the mono-syllabic expression hǎo (好),  zǒu (走), etc.

2) When a 3rd. tone is at the end of a sentence  or a phrase, e.g.   **liǎobùqǐ (了不起.), wǒbùgǎn (我不敢.), etc.
 
 When a sentence has three 3rd. tones next to each other, e.g. wǒhěnhǎo (我很好.) There are two different ways of pronouncing the sentence:

 1) wǒ hén hǎo (3rd., 2nd. and 3rd.)

2) wó hén hǎo (2nd., 2nd. and 3rd.)

Finally I'd have to say that I totally agree with what Lugubert said that you'd rather get the pronunciation correct at the very beginning. Otherwise, you might end up spending a lot more time feeling frustruated because Chinese natives might have problems in understanding you and they are probably secretly thinking that your pronunciation is funnily cute because you sound just like a **lǎowài (老外）**. 

If you can make some extra effort to practise the correct pronunication of different tones so that you can speak proper mandarin later, why don't you?**

Cheers,

GeChang*


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## Ivan Tan

Nothing wrong with a laowai accent. Compared to some regional accents/dialects of China which should remain unnamed, I find it rather pleasing to my ears. I will have difficulty understanding your Mandarin, only when you misuse vocabulary and use bad grammar. Pronunciation is no big issue, imo. I do admire people who speak perfect Chinese though.


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## GeChang

Ivan Tan said:


> Nothing wrong with a laowai accent. Compared to some regional accents/dialects of China which should remain unnamed, I find it rather pleasing to my ears. I will have difficulty understanding your Mandarin, only when you misuse vocabulary and use bad grammar. Pronunciation is no big issue, imo. I do admire people who speak perfect Chinese though.



*Hi,

I appreciate your personal opinion. My point is that pronunication is important when someone is learning a foreign language. Equally, a good command of vocabulary and grammar is important as well. We are discussing about Standard Mandarin (普通话）, not dialects or accents from different regions of China. I do encourage anyone who's studying Standard Mandarin to try your best, to practise as much as you can on the correct pronunciations of words, sentences, because definitely, the result will be rewarding.

Cheers,

GeChang*


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## Ivan Tan

I see your point. And I thought my comment was meant to be encouraging, in some way. Never mind. For some reason I relate this issue to accent reduction which people talk a lot these days. Basically, I believe to make sure others can understand you is most important. A different accent can just add a bit of flavour to your language. Most Chinese do not speak standard Mandarin. In most cases, they, including Northeasterners, Shandongnese, Henanese etc, speak their dialects to you because they expect you to understand them which technically are close to so-called Putonghua or standard Mandarin I suppose. Generally speaking, these dialects are Putonghua with a funny accent where tones are pronounced 'incorrectly'. And laowai accented Mandarin is Putonghua with a funny accent where tones are pronounced 'incorrectly' too! Therefore both are equal. Hence my tones-are-not-important-regional-accents-are-even-worse post. Hmmm, does it make sense?


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## lazarus1907

Ivan Tan said:


> And laowai accented Mandarin is Putonghua with a funny accent where tones are pronounced 'incorrectly' too! Therefore both are equal. Hence my  tones-are-not-important-regional-accents-are-even-worse post. Hmmm, does it make sense?


Hi,

Not every foreigner finds it easy to pronounce tones correctly, and one shouldn't give up because of this. But not even trying because Chinese people are going to do their best to understand you is just lazy, and wrong. Correct pronounciation and intonation are important in any language, same as the grammar. I appreciate when people give the correct tones in this forum; it is a very useful thing, and saves lots of time to people who are trying to learn standard Mandarin. If you are not interested, just ignore it, but let the rest learn the proper intonation. I wouldn't encourage anyone not to try to speak correctly.

Regards,


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## Ivan Tan

Sorry, I did not realise people would interpret my posts this way. In all honesty, I meant to encourage people to keep up studying by pointing out mispronunciation is not that embarrassing and bad. I guess I should keep my mouth shut then.


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## Lugubert

Ivan,

I don't think that your posts are interpreted contrary to your views. It's just that different aspects are stressed. I'm quite relieved by the view that I just might be understood despite my tone problems. On the other hand, I do try to get them right. On occasions, I've tried to start a 2 all the way from my shoes up, but an indigenous 同学 has told me, "No, not 4!"

I find some consolation in knowing that some dialects have problems that I don't have. Take a southerner who pronounces 中国 as cōngguó. Who's more incomprehensible to a Beijinger, that person or me if I get the zh correct but blow the tones? I suppose it might be a case of what the other party has been exposed to, so probably I would never the less be at a disadvantage.

I'm planning - and slightly fearing - a trip to China in spring '08 to test my Chinese.


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