Easy Way to Learn Mandarin Chinese Tones!

Chinese has four tones, plus a "neutral" tone. Differences in tone change the meanings of words. For example, the sound "ma" can mean mom, toad, horse, scold, or be a particle indicating a question.

In the Hànyǔ Pīnyīn writing system, the tones are represented with diacritics. The four diacritical marks using in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn are demonstrated below:

1st tone: mā (mom)
2nd tone: má (toad)
3rd tone: mǎ (horse)
4th tone: mà (scold)
Neutral : ma (question particle)

Many learners of Chinese whose native languages do not use tones in this way have difficulty remembering the tones when learning new vocabulary or correctly pronouncing the tones when reading aloud from Pīnyīn. Often student report ignoring or "not seeing" the diacritical marks.

The most wide-spread romanization system to incorporate the tones into spelling was the Gwoyeu Romatzyh (GR) romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It used a complicated set of complicated rules to indicate the various tones:

The following (slightly edited) explanation of the rules is taken from Wikipedia.

The additional letter or modified letter (replacement of another) to signify tone is usually done to the vowel or diphthong. The following list number correspond to tone number.

1. No extra tone-letter is added to tone one, i.e., they are written as if they have no tone, and syllables with other tones are modified from tone one. Except:

1.1 Those beginning with l, r, m, and n have -h after them. And tone-two syllables with l, r, m, and n initials behave like tone-one syllable.

2. For tone-two syllables, all vowels (and last vowel of the diphthongs) are followed by r, except:

2.1 I becomes y, unless it is final, then i has y preceding it: yi.

2.2 U becomes w, unless it is final, then u has w preceding it: wu.

3. Tone-three vowels are doubled, except:

3.1 Diphthongs with a do not double. Instead, the I becomes e or the U becomes o.

3.2 Note that, for diphthongs without a, the letter that comes first in alphabet order is doubled, i.e.,

3.2.1 Double e, not i.

3.2.2 Double o, not u.

3.3 There may also be an additional cosmetic change. See below.

4. For tone-four syllables, all vowels (and last vowel of the diphthongs) are followed by h, except:

4.1 Those syllables end in -n double the consonant: -nn.

4.2 Those end in -l double the consonant: -ll.

4.3 Those end in -ng become -nq.

4.4 In diphthongs with final "I" or "U"...

4.4.1 I becomes y.

4.4.2 U becomes w.

4.5 There may also be an additional cosmetic change. See below.

5. A dot (often written as period) is placed before neutral tone syllables (which otherwise appear in those syllables' exact original tonal spelling). However, this is sometimes ignored by the writer.

[END OF WIKIPEDIA QUOTE]

For example, the four tones of ma:

1. ma
2. mar
3. maa
4. mah
5. .ma

GR is considered unnecessarily complicated by most educators and students, and while it is still used in some Chinese textbooks, it has for the most part been supplanted by Hànyǔ Pīnyīn.

The TOP system assist learners of Chinese remember the tones by incorporating the tones into the spelling, while avoiding the complexity of GR system.

The TOP system is simply Hànyǔ Pīnyīn with tones represented by letter capitalization rather than diacritics.

The TOP system renders the four tones of "ma" as follows:

1st tone: MA (all letters uppercase)
2nd tone: mA (final letter uppercase)
3rd tone: ma (all letters lowercase)
4th tone: Ma (initial letter uppercase)
Neutral : ma* (all lowercase with an asterisk at the end)

Any student of Chinese that has learned Hànyǔ Pīnyīn can learn TOP in under two minutes. Other benefits of TOP include:

1. Can be easily typed from any keyboard. No special characters required.

2. Tones are no longer an after thought. Instead of diacritical marks or numbers tacked on to the end of words, TOP represents tones by the way the words are written. You can't even begin to write the word without knowing the tone.

3. Like Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, but unlike GR, the tones are graphically represented. The first tone is a sustained higher-pitch, well-represented by all capital characters (e.g., MA, LUO, QING). The second tone is a rising tone, and the word itself rises (e.g., mA, luO, qinG). The third tone is a falling then rising or sustained low tone and is represented using all lowercase (e.g., ma, luo, qing). The fourth tone is a falling tone and is represented with an initial capital letter (e.g., Ma, Luo, Qing).

Although TOP is based off of Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, there are two notable differences:

1. Normal rules of capitalization are not used, as capitalization is used to denote tones.

2. The one-letter syllables "a" and "e" in Hànyǔ Pīnyīn are doubled (e.g. "aa" and "ee") so that the tones can be represented with capitalization (e.g., AA, aA, aa, Aa, aa*)

While TOP is a very helpful spelling technique to help student of Chinese master tones, it is not meant to replace standard Hànyǔ Pīnyīn. TOP is aesthetically unpleasing and difficult to read when there are large amounts of text or from a distance (such as on signs).

For example:

Míngtiān nǐ qù ma? (Are you going tomorrow?)

The TOP system renders this sentence as:

minGTIAN ni Qu ma*?

Once students reach intermediate level in their Chinese, they should be sufficiently comfort

It is common for many to simply suffix a number, 1-4, at the end of the Pinyin word to represent the tone and some question why not just follow this convention instead of using the TOP system. On commenter to this lens writes:

"I agree tone mark problems but why not just use the basic numbers?? ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4 ma5, many people consider this a little childish but if you make a swift mental switch to view the numbers as extra letters it is easy to remember the tones as ma1 and ma3 are different spellings."

The idea is that the tones are further reinforced by visually representing the tones using capitalization. The argument against tone numbers at the end is that they become an afterthought, and add-on, much like the diacritical marks.

There are two advantages to using numbers to represent tones. First, you can type the words using a regular typewriter or computer without resorting to special characters. They will display well on all computers. Second, you don't have learn the rules for where to place the tone marks, which serve only an aesthetic purpose.

The first point holds true for TOP as well. The second also holds true, except for you need to spend a bit more time learning the capitalization rules as opposed to just sticking a number at the end of the word. By a "bit more time", however, I mean, oh, thirty seconds.

TOP offers the additional advantage of representing the tone as rising or falling in the same way that the diacritical marks, without resorting to special characters and integral to the spelling, rather than an "after-mark". Numbers appended to the end of a work provide no visual cues. For many, that is not an obstacle. Others, however, find such visual cues very helpful.