Chinese Pinyin

In Mandarin Chinese it happens that sometimes we change the tones of certain Pinyin syllable to improve the clarity or ease pronunciation difficulties, here are some general rules.

1. The 3rd tone is a changeable tone. When two 3rd tones come together, the first 3rd tone should be changed into a 2nd tone, e.g., nĭ hăo (你好 hello) should be pronounced níhăo.

2. When a 3rd tone is followed by a 1st, 2nd, 4th or neutral tone, the 3rd tone should be pronounced as a low 3rd tone. In other words it is a low sustained tone, e.g., as in jĭnzhāng (紧张 nervous) and jiĕfàng (解放 liberate). Both jĭn and jiĕ stay in the lower part of your voice and you don’t move the sound up.

3. Only under the following situations should the 3rd tone be pronounced as a proper 3rd tone:

* when a 3rd tone is on its own. For example, the mono-syllabic expression hăo (好 OK, all right).
* when a 3rd tone is at the end of a sentence or a phrase, e.g. fànghăo (放好 to put [something] properly.)

4. When a sentence has three third tones next to each other, it can be changed into the following two patterns:

* second, second and proper third
* lower third, second and proper third.

For example: wŏ hĕn hăo (我很好 I am fine) can be pronounced either wŏ hénhăo or wó hénhăo.

The neutral tone in Mandarin Chinese is a short and light tone, as described above. The best way to remember how to pronounce the neutral tone is to remember its length and its pitch as follows:

* The syllable before the neutral tone should be pronounced longer, as if it is a crochet in music notation and the neutral tone as a quaver.
* A neutral tone should be in the middle range of your voice. If a neutral tone is preceded by a low tone such as a third (curved) tone or a low ending tone such as a fourth (falling) tone, the neutral tone should end up at a higher pitch than the preceding tones; if a neutral tone is preceded by a first (sustained) tone or second (rising) tone, the neutral tone should end at a lower pitch than the preceding tones.

Here are some examples of tone changes

1 xiè xie 2 hăo ma 3 mā ma 4 péng you
5 jiĕ jie 6 xìng zhi 7 hái zi 8 yá men