声调
shēng diàoMandarin has four tones — and a neutral fifth. The same syllable at four different pitches produces four unrelated words. Tone is not optional stress; it is part of the phoneme.
In English, pitch conveys emotion or sentence structure: a rising pitch at the end of a sentence signals a question. The pitch carries attitude, not meaning. Change the pitch of "cat" and it's still a cat, just said with surprise or boredom.
In Mandarin, pitch is lexical — it distinguishes words. The syllable mā (high level pitch) means mother. The same syllable mǎ (dipping pitch) means horse. Nothing about the consonant or vowel changes; only the contour of pitch. This is a tone language: tone is part of the word, not an overlay on it.
Mandarin has four primary tones plus a neutral tone. Every syllable in Mandarin has an assigned tone, and that tone is part of its pronunciation. In writing, tones are marked in pinyin with diacritic marks above vowels. On this site, tone numbers (1–4) appear after pinyin in headers: dào = dào (4th tone).
The syllable ma across all four tones demonstrates how a single pronunciation diverges into four separate words:
妈 mā (tone 1) — mother · 麻 má (tone 2) — hemp; numb; surname · 马 mǎ (tone 3) — horse · 骂 mà (tone 4) — to scold, curse
The classic learning verse uses this set: 妈麻马骂 — "Mother scolds the horse for being numb." Every Mandarin learner encounters this sentence within their first week.
Mandarin has a fifth tonal category called the neutral tone (轻声 qīng shēng, "light tone") or zeroth tone. Neutral-tone syllables are short, unstressed, and their pitch is determined by the preceding syllable rather than by any inherent contour. They carry no diacritic in pinyin — the vowel is unmarked.
The neutral tone appears in: grammatical particles (吗 ma, 呢 ne, 吧 ba, 啊 a), repeated syllables in nouns (妈妈 māma, 爸爸 bàba), and certain suffixes (们 men, 子 zi, 头 tou). The second syllable loses its full tone and becomes a brief, colorless sound.
Not all speakers neutralize the same syllables. Southern Mandarin varieties often preserve the full tone where Beijing Mandarin would neutralize it — this is one of the clearest regional markers in Mandarin speech.
Two third tones in a row. When a third-tone syllable is followed by another third-tone syllable, the first one rises to a second tone in speech. 你好 is pronounced níhǎo, not nǐhǎo. The rule applies across word boundaries: 所有 (suǒyǒu) → sóuyǒu in fast speech. The written pinyin preserves the underlying tones; the change happens only in pronunciation.
一 yī (one) changes tone. 一 is tone 1 in isolation. Before a fourth-tone syllable it becomes second tone (yí gè). Before a first, second, or third tone syllable it becomes fourth tone (yì tiān, yì nián). In ordinal position (第一) or at the end of a phrase, it stays first tone.
不 bù (not) changes tone. 不 is tone 4 in isolation. Before another fourth-tone syllable it shifts to second tone: 不是 is pronounced bú shì, not bù shì.
In informal digital writing, tones are often written as numbers after the syllable rather than as diacritics: mā = ma1, má = ma2, mǎ = ma3, mà = ma4. Neutral tone is 0 or 5 depending on convention. This site uses diacritics in body text and tone numbers in parenthetical references (e.g., tone 4 in the sidebar).