Mandarin, like all Chinese dialects, is a tonal language. This means that the pitch pattern of a word helps determine its meaning, in addition to the more familiar building blocks of vowels and consonants. Learning to understand and differentiate tones can be an overwhelming but essential step in learning Chinese.
We can understand how tones determine meaning in Chinese by looking at how they determine how pitch conveys meaning in English. In English we raise our pitch when we are asking a question, we sharpen up our pitch to “punch out” words to indicate a commanding presence, we drop our pitch when we are displeased, we soften and raise our voice when we”re talking to cute things like puppies. This type of pitch variation is called intonation. Intonation is the “melody” of a phrase or sentence.
Chinese also uses intonation to alter the meaning of sentences or phrases, but unlike English, pitch is also used to differentiate words from each other. For instance, in English the words bed and red differ only by the consonants that begin each word, “b” and “r.” In Mandarin, two words or characters might have the exact same vowels and consonants, in the same order, and the only difference between them is their tones. A common example of this is “ma.” When spoken with a high, steady tone, it means mother (妈 mā), and when spoken with a tone that dips and rises again, it means “horse” (马 mǎ) Mandarin has four distinct tones and a fifth neutral tone. You can listen to the four tones here.
First tone is the “high tone”. First tone is a steady, high pitch with no ups or downs. It tone may sound as if sung rather than spoken. Try saying “doe” as if you were beginning a musical scale.
Second tone is the “rising tone.” In second tone the pitch of speech rises from a medium tone to a high tone. It is similar to the intonation we use as we finish asking a question in English. You can practice this by asking “what?” in a puzzled tone.
Third tone is the “dipping tone.” It begins as a middle tone, dips to a low tone and proceeds to rise. If a third tone falls between other tones it may only fall in pitch and not rise at the end. To an English speaker, it might sound “whiny”; think of the last time you heard a child begging their parent for something in the store. You can try out the third tone yourself very easily. Remember back in middle-school when your parents would let you do “that thing” you really wanted to go do and let out your whiniest “…but mo-om.” Feel how the tone of “mom” dips in the middle? That”s third tone.
Fourth tone is the “falling tone.” In fourth tone the pitch is dropped sharply from a high pitch to a low pitch. In this way it may sound reminiscent of a decisive English language command. Imagine your parents response to your “…but mo-om”—“NO.” That sharp descending pitch is fourth tone.
Fifth tone, or neutral tone, can be thought of as the lack of tone. The pitch of a fifth tone is determined by the proceeding tone. There are no changes of pitch within the fifth tone. In short, it may be best to consider fifth tone as anything but the other 4 tones, though to get an idea you can try the fifth tone by saying “uhhhh” as blankly as possible.
Tones can be puzzling and frustrating at first. It takes many students months of practice to be able to fully differentiate tones in conversation. You can use drills or audio recordings to practice and improve your recognition. Practicing on your own is especially helpful in learning to hear the difference between the tones. To learn how to pronounce the tones correctly, there is no way to replace feedback from a native speaker, preferably a trained teacher or tutor. Mastering this aspect of Mandarin may take hours of making funny noises while staring at your computer or iPod, but if you can learn these five tones, then you are well on your way to learning Chinese.