What you will be able to do
- Produce the four tones and the neutral tone on one syllable, and hear which is which.
- Apply the third-tone rule: third plus third is said as second plus third, as in 你好 and 我很好.
- Give 不 and 一 the tone the context demands instead of the tone printed in a word list.
Chinese words in this text can be activated to show a dictionary gloss.
The four tones and the neutral tone
Mandarin uses pitch the way English uses consonants: change the pitch and you change the word, not the mood. The syllable ma said in five different ways gives five unrelated words — mā (mother), má (hemp), mǎ (horse), mà (to scold), and the question particle ma.
What each tone does
- First tone (mā) — high and flat. Hold one steady note near the top of your comfortable range, like the sustained aaah a doctor asks for. It does not move.
- Second tone (má) — rising. It starts in the middle and climbs, exactly like the English Huh? when you did not catch what someone said.
- Third tone (mǎ) — low. Said slowly and alone it dips and comes back up, but in ordinary speech it is simply the lowest tone: the voice sinks and stays down, often with a slight creak. Learners who chase the full dip sound slow; learners who just go low sound natural.
- Fourth tone (mà) — falling, sharp and short. It drops from the top to the bottom like a firm Stop!
- Neutral tone (ma) — no contour of its own. Short, light and unstressed, its pitch is whatever the syllable before it leaves behind: xièxie, míngzi, shénme, māma.
Practise the four on one syllable in order, then out of order. Most beginners can produce all four in isolation within a week; the work is keeping them when the syllable sits inside a sentence.
When two third tones meet
A third tone immediately before another third tone is said as a second tone. The spelling does not change; the pronunciation does.
- is written nǐ hǎo and said ní hǎo.
- hěn hǎo is said hén hǎo.
- wǒ hěn hǎo comes out wó hén hǎo — the last third tone survives, the ones before it rise.
Before any other tone, a third tone drops its rise altogether and stays low: lǎoshī, nǐmen, hǎochī.
and rewrite their own tone
bù is fourth tone, except directly before another fourth tone, where it becomes bú: bú shì, bú kèqi, bú qù. Everywhere else it stays bù: bù hǎo, bù lái, bù chī.
yī keeps its first tone when you count, at the end of a number and in ordinals: yī, shíyī, dì-yī. Before a fourth tone it becomes yí: yí ge, yíxià. Before a first, second or third tone it becomes yì: yì tiān, yì nián, yìqǐ.
Textbooks differ over whether to print these changes. HSK Guide writes them for and and leaves the third-tone change unwritten, which is the commonest convention — so nǐ hǎo on the page is ní hǎo in the mouth.
How to work through it
Pitch belongs to the wordread
Read the opening section and say the five versions of *ma* out loud once each. Do not worry yet about words — the aim is to feel that your voice is doing something deliberate rather than expressing an emotion.
Five ways to say one syllableaudio
Listen to mā / má / mǎ / mà / ma in order, then shuffled. Mark the one you keep confusing — for most learners it is the second against the third, because both end higher than they start.
Third tone meets third tonesentence
Say each line twice, once as written and once as spoken: 你好 nǐ hǎo → *ní hǎo*; 很好 hěn hǎo → *hén hǎo*; 我很好 wǒ hěn hǎo → *wó hén hǎo*. Then say 老师好 lǎoshī hǎo, where no change happens because the tones do not collide.
Give 不 the right tonequiz
Six short negative sentences. For each one, choose bù or bú before you choose the meaning — the tone follows from the tone of the next syllable, nothing else.
Record and comparespeaking
Record yourself saying 你好，我很好，谢谢 (Nǐ hǎo, wǒ hěn hǎo, xièxie) and play it against the model. Listen only for the third tones and for the light second syllable of 谢谢.