How to MASTER the Tones of Mandarin Chinese

We've seen his weapons. I don't understand why a swordsman like him would use such a broken bow. Mandarin Chinese. It's the official language of mainland China, spoken by over a billion people. Now, if you live in the West, you may hear Cantonese more often, which is a more sing-song sounding form of Chinese, spoken in the south of China. And it's normally the prevalent form of Chinese in most Chinatowns. You speak Chinese? Cantonese. If you want to hear the difference, in this next clip, the guy on the right is speaking Mandarin, and the other guy who replies to him is speaking Cantonese. You can hear a difference, right? Cantonese has six tones and there's more of a difference between them with low, medium and high level tones. But Mandarin has just four tones with one high level tone and other tones that either go up or down. The tones in Mandarin sound less obvious, but they are still there. In this video, we are going to first explain the tones, show you how to master them, and then once you've learned the tones, you won't sound authentic unless you know the tone changes. Yes, that's right. You think you know them, but then it's like, well, you know all that stuff that you just learned? Well, forget about that because when this tone goes in front of this tone, it changes to that tone and you're going to get what I'm talking about in a minute. This is how to master the tones of Mandarin Chinese. So this video will be of help to Chinese learners, but I also intend it to be interesting for everyone, giving you a sense of how a tonal language works, and then at the end, we'll show you a few examples of common Chinese words that most English speakers would know but pronounce with their correct tones and correct pronunciation. For example, you may have been ordering chow mein all this time in Chinese restaurants, but it's actually supposed to be pronounced chow mien. Don't believe me? Listen to this. Here's another one Westerners always get wrong. We'll tell you how to accurately pronounce the name of the Chinese leader with the tones later in the video. But first, let's get into it. So here are the tones in Mandarin. The first tone. This is a high level tone and we will use the word ma to demonstrate. So this would be ma, ma. If you are a guy, be careful not to make this too high. It's not ma, right? Especially if your teacher is female, it's easy to imitate them and go too high with this. When I started university, learning Chinese there, and I'd already learned a bit of Chinese with a private tutor before, the professor heard my speaking and immediately said, you were taught by a woman. And that's because of how high my first tone was. And I was indeed taught by a woman, right? So be careful with this. You're not an opera singer. Your first tone shouldn't be like this ridiculously high note. No, it's just high relative to your other tones and your normal speaking voice. Ma, ma. All right, moving on. Second tone. This is a rising tone and you can think of it like how when you ask a question in English, your pitch goes up slightly at the end of the sentence. Like, is this yours? That yours? Yours? It goes up, right? You can also hear this in the Australian accent where even stuff that's not a question, they go up at the end anyway. They go, I'm Australian. I'm Australian. They're not asking a question, but they still just go up. I do realize that I'm responsible for my own actions. I'm responsible for my actions. In casual speech in Chinese, this is kind of what this tone sounds like. It's just going up quickly, okay? From the middle of your vocal range up to the top kind of meets the first tone. Ma, ma. Of course, if you want to put more emphasis on this word, your second tone may be more pronounced. Like, let me think of an example with this. Let's say you were just saying one word, like the name of a book that you were about to start reading. Let's say the philosophical book by the Taoist sage Lao Tzu called Tao Te Ching, okay? I'm saying the title of a book as if I was going to start reading it. I'm not just saying one word and passing in the middle of a sentence. So I might want to let my second tone ring out for a bit longer, right? Tao Te Ching, okay? Because, you know, I'm kind of saying one thing on its own. Or if I wanted to say the word, bu shi, okay? It's not. I could say it like this, bu shi, okay? Quickly. That second tone is really quick. Just like, bu, bu, bu. Just going up a little bit. Or if I want to really emphasize that I don't agree with you, okay? It's not like that. I could say, bu shi, okay? Much longer and more emphasized second tone. But when it's said mid-sentence, especially when it's not really emphasized, it's just like going up a little bit at the end of a question in English, okay? The third tone. The third tone goes down from the middle of our vocal range and then it comes back up. To the middle. It doesn't go all the way up to where the first tone is, okay? But it goes just down and then back up to the middle. And in some situations, like in two character combinations with other tones, it hardly even comes up at all, okay? It just feels like sort of chilled falling tone. We're going to talk about tone changes later. If you want to do it right though, first, you need to learn how it sounds when you just say one character on its own with this. It goes down and then it comes back up. And you can practice by moving your chin down and then back up, okay? So ma, ma. Obviously, don't do that all the time, especially when you're speaking with people. You're going to look like a chicken or something. Ma, ma, ma. A word in this tone that you will often hear just said on its own, okay? With no other word directly before or after to cause a tone change is the word that they often use for yes in Chinese, hao, which it actually means good. But with certain types of questions, you can just reply hao and it basically means yes. Now, one last one. The fourth tone. This is just a falling tone and it's short and sharp. Actually, to me, I don't even necessarily really hear it falling. It's just like saying a word with force, okay? I guess it is falling technically, but the short and abrupt aspect of it is the more noticeable aspect for me. Ma, ma. To practice, you can nod your head downwards. This might help you get the feel of it that it's going downward and that is short and sharp, right? Ma, ma. But don't do that all the time, okay? Again, you'll end up looking like an idiot. Now, in Chinese, there are a lot of verbs that are fourth tone, like shi, the verb to be, or kan, the verb to look, or hui, the verb to be able, etc. This one is probably, in my opinion, the easiest of the four to master. Then we have the fifth tone, which, okay, I said there were four tones, but now I'm giving you a fifth tone. But we don't really call this a tone because it's just sort of a neutral tone, all right? It's just, it's completely unemphasized, sitting at about the middle of your tonal range, okay? So ma, ma. It's like a non-tone. All right, now let's look at some tone changes and then we will correct the pronunciation of some common words. So when you have two or more third tones in a row, you only really pronounce the last one as a third tone. This is really easily observable in the word for hello, nǐ hǎo, which literally means you good, but that's how they say hello in Chinese, where it's one way of saying it. Now, this is two third tones in a row, but if you were to say nǐ, hǎo, and then you try to say that fast, nǐ, hǎo, it gets a bit awkward, okay? So they change the first tone to a second tone, nǐ hǎo. Chinese people probably don't even know that they're doing this unless you're like a language professor or something. It just feels natural to say it this way, so they do it. If you have more than two third tones in a row, so three, for example, like in this word, zhǎn láng guǎn, that means an exhibition center. It's three third tones in a row, but you would sound like a complete idiot if you were to try and pronounce all of them, okay? zhǎn láng guǎn. So instead, the first two change into second tones, zhǎn láng guǎn. And to go a step further, this specific exhibition center is called nán gǎng, zhǎn láng guǎn, and it's in Taipei, Taiwan. It has the word nán gǎng, okay, that's a place name before it, and the gǎng from that word, from that place name, is also a third tone. So if you were going to say it fast in conversation, it's not going to be nán gǎng, zhǎn láng guǎn. It's going to be all second tones with one third tone at the end. nán gǎng, zhǎn láng guǎn. That's our first tone change. Let's now look at another one. And if you can do this one, you're really going to sound like a native speaker. When you have a third tone before first, second, or fourth tones, that third tone becomes more chilled, okay? So some people call it like a half third tone, so it kind of goes down, but it doesn't really come up very much at the end. Like the word xǐ huān, to like, okay? We're not saying xǐ huān, we're not coming all the way back up to the middle after the third tone and then saying another word, okay? We're actually cutting it off so it hardly comes back up, okay? It goes down, just comes up a very tiny bit. And in some accents, it doesn't even come up at all. But it's still not like a fourth tone, okay? Because it's much more chilled. It's not like a short, sharp tone. That would be xǐ huān, okay? It's not like that. It's xǐ huān. And this gets even more noticeable when it's followed by a second tone. The two kind of blend together. So the third tone just brings you down and then the next word's second tone brings you back up again, completing a down-then-up movement. So words like yǔ yán, language, jiè jué, to resolve, or guǒ rán, as expected. Like these two words together have now become a third tone. Here's another tone change. The character bù, meaning not, always changes to a second tone when it is before a fourth tone. And this is very common. Since, remember we said a lot of verbs in Chinese are fourth tone. So you get bù shì instead of bù shì and bù kàn instead of bù kàn and bù huì instead of bù huì. I think because this word bù is used so often before a verb, it just sounds easier to say second-then-fourth than saying two fourths in a row. Now there are quite a few more tone changes but let's now move on to the next section. Maybe if we do a Chinese course on our channel for channel members in the future, we can actually have a video that goes through all the tone changes in detail. And also you may think that this is a lot to remember but actually these tone changes have come about because it's just easier to say things like that. Like we said, many Chinese people don't even know these tone change rules because it just feels natural to speak like that. And that's why once you start learning them, you're actually going to feel that it's easier and you're not actively remembering tone changes and implementing them. You're just saying it that way because it's just easier to say. All right. Let's now look at how to pronounce some common Chinese words that people in the West probably know with the correct tones. Now you guys know that I am obsessed with Kung Fu movies. So how do you say Kung Fu properly in Chinese with all the tones? Well, it doesn't begin with a K at all, okay? It's actually Gong Fu, okay? Gong, not Kung. The Gong is pronounced in the first tone. So that's that high level tone, Gong. And then Fu is a neutral tone, okay? Just Fu. That character on its own though would actually be pronounced Fu in the first, you know, high level tone too. But no one says it that way. It's not Gong Fu, okay? It's just Gong Fu. And this is the same with the word Shifu which means a master. Could be a Kung Fu master or a master of something else like an accomplished Buddhist monk. Check out how the Monkey King says it to his master, the Tang monk in Journey to the West. So this one is Shifu. It's not Shifu. It's Shifu. As for which characters in two word combinations are going to be pronounced in the neutral tone, it's always going to be end character. But as for which words specifically have this, you just need to memorize them, all right? There's no rule that tells you when to do this, okay? Neutral tones though are much more common in mainland China and especially in the Beijing dialect. And they are less common in Taiwan although there are still words in Taiwan that use them. Now let's look at some more food. We already told you that Chow Mein is Chow Mien, all right? Third tone, then fourth tone and slightly different pronunciation. That means fried noodles. By the way, I'm sure you know that because you order it all the time. Oh, do you speak Chinese? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, Chow Mein. True. Chow Mien Ma. Then Chow Fan is fried rice. Okay, so the word Chow means to fry. So this is also third tone and then fourth tone, okay? Chow Fan. And now for one of my personal favorites, Beijing Kao Ya or Beijing Roast Duck or you'll often see this written as Peking Roast Duck or Peking Crispy Duck. The bonus with this one is that you get the correct pronunciation of China's capital, okay? Beijing. It's third tone, then first tone and roast duck is actually also third tone, then first tone, okay? So it's Beijing Kao Ya. And talking of Beijing and China's government, let's now look at another one that Westerners often get wrong. The name of China's current leader. The latest meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Beijing. Right, so they say Xi Jinping or they'll say it like this. Before he meets with Xi Jinping. Neither of these are right, okay? His surname is Xi, which it starts with X and the X sound in Chinese to give you a very basic explanation of this sound. It's like halfway between a sh and a ss. So you can literally try this with your mouth. First go sh and then go ss and then go halfway in between. So it's like sh it's not all the way to ss it's halfway in between. There you go. So his name would be Xi and then the next part his given name is actually pronounced pretty much how it's written, okay? Now if we add the tones it's going to be fourth tone then second tone and if we say the whole thing together it's going to be second tone fourth tone second tone Someone needs to tell that to Maria Bartiromo. Then let's give you one last one. What about feng shui? The art of knowing where and which direction to build your house or how to arrange your furniture. I don't know if the feng shui in here is off or something. A lot of Westerners might call this feng shui or feng shuai or something but actually it's pronounced feng shui. The first tone and then the third tone feng shui. All right guys that is the video for today. I hope you found it interesting and I hope that even people who aren't actively learning Chinese could also follow along and get some value out of this even if it's just for fun. If you like our work please consider joining our channel as a member for $4.99 a month. 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