The pinyin system also uses diacritics for the four tones of Mandarin, usually above a non-medial vowel. Many books printed in China mix fonts, with vowels and tone marks rendered in a different font than the surrounding text, tending to give such pinyin texts a typographically ungainly appearance. This style, most likely rooted in early technical limitations, has led many to believe that pinyin's rules call for this practice and also for the use of a Latin alpha ("ɑ") rather than the standard style of the letter ("a") found in most fonts. The official rules of Hanyu Pinyin, however, specify no such practice. Note that tone marks can also appear on consonants in certain vowelless exclamations.
- The first tone (Flat or High Level Tone) is represented by a macron (ˉ) added to the pinyin vowel:
ā (ɑ̄) ē ī ō ū ǖ Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū Ǖ
- The second tone (Rising or High-Rising Tone) is denoted by an acute accent (ˊ):
á (ɑ́) é í ó ú ǘ Á É Í Ó Ú Ǘ
- The third tone (Falling-Rising or Low Tone) is marked by a caron/háček (ˇ). It is not the rounded breve (˘), though a breve is sometimes substituted due to font limitations.
ǎ (ɑ̌) ě ǐ ǒ ǔ ǚ Ǎ Ě Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ Ǚ
- The fourth tone (Falling or High-Falling Tone) is represented by a grave accent (ˋ):
à (ɑ̀) è ì ò ù ǜ À È Ì Ò Ù Ǜ
- The fifth or neutral tone (Neutral Tone) is represented by a normal vowel without any accent mark:
a (ɑ) e i o u ü A E I O U Ü
- (In some cases, this is also written with a dot before the syllable; for example, ·ma.)
These tone marks normally are only used in Mandarin textbooks or in foreign learning texts, but they are essential for correct pronunciation of Mandarin syllables, as exemplified by the following classic example of five characters whose pronunciations differ only in their tones:
| Traditional characters: Simplified characters: |
The words are "mother", "hemp", "horse", "scold" and a question particle, respectively.
Numerals in place of tone marks
Since before the advent of computers, many fonts did not contain vowels with macron or caron diacritics, a common convention for tone is to add a tone number at the end of individual syllables. For example, tóng is written tong2. The number used for each tone is as the order listed above (except the neutral tone, which is either not numbered or numbered zero, as in ma0 吗/嗎 (an interrogative marker).
| Tone | Tone Mark | Number added to end of syllable in place of tone mark | Example using tone mark | Example using number | IPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First | macron ( ˉ ) | 1 | mā | ma1 | mɑ˥˥ |
| Second | acute accent ( ˊ ) | 2 | má | ma2 | mɑ˧˥ |
| Third | caron ( ˇ ) | 3 | mǎ | ma3 | mɑ˨˩˦ |
| Fourth | grave accent ( ˋ ) | 4 | mà | ma4 | mɑ˥˩ |
| "Neutral" | No mark or dot before syllable (·) | no number 0 | ma ·ma | ma ma0 | mɑ |
Tones and homophones
Official modern Mandarin has only 400 spoken monosyllables but over 10,000 written characters, so there are many homophones only distinguishable by the four tones. Even this is often not enough unless the context and exact phrase or cí is identified.
The mono-syllable jī, first tone in standard Mandarin, corresponds to the following characters: 雞/鸡 chicken, 機/机 machine, 基 basic, 擊/击 (to) hit, 饑/饥 hunger, and 積/积 sum. In speech, the glyphing of a monosyllable to its meaning must be determined by context or by relation to other morphemes (e.g. "some" as in the opposite of "none"). Native speakers may state which words or phrases their names are found in, for convenience of writing: 名字叫嘉英，嘉陵江的嘉，英國的英 Míngzi jiào Jiāyīng, Jiālíng Jiāng de jiā, Yīngguó de yīng "My name is Jiāyīng, the Jia for Jialing River and the ying for the short form in Chinese of UK."
Southern Chinese varieties like Cantonese and Hakka preserved more of the rimes of Middle Chinese and have more tones. The previous examples of jī, for instance, for "stimulated", "chicken", and "machine", have distinct pronunciations in Cantonese (romanized using jyutping): gik1, gai1, and gei1, respectively. For this reason, southern varieties tend to employ fewer multi-syllabic words.
Source: Wikipedia.com
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