This cheat sheet is designed to aid your understanding whilst watching @ellychinese. Tones are often considered as those ANNOYING and difficult things about learning Chinese. But it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it through (and I'll say it again):
<aside> 💡 1) Listening; 2) Saying it out loud; 3) Repeat!
</aside>
When in doubt, record yourself and compare the sounds you hear from my videos. It’s important that you hear your own voice back to back!
Throughout the courses, I’ll be using pinyins.
For those who don’t know, Pinyin is a system for reading Mandarin Chinese using the Roman alphabet. It is used exclusively in Mainland China, but has been widely spread and accepted by the international community. However, the pronunciations of pinyins may sound entirely different from English!
I highly recommend anyone starting out to play with these free resources:
I have attached a tone table for you, but the key to mastering the four tones ultimately come down to familiarity and constant hearing. It might take awhile to sink in, but slowly, you’ll find yourself able to differentiate the tones!
The Tone Table
| first | ā | Constant (-) | yī shēng 一声 |
|---|---|---|---|
| second | á | Rising (?) | èr shēng 二声 |
| third | aˇ | Low (Drop) | sān shēng 三声 |
| fourth | à | Falling (!) | sì shēng 四声 |
| a | Context dependent | qīng shēng 轻声 |
Note that although we’re using ‘a’ as an example, it can be totally replaced by Mandarin vowels (as we’ll uncover on the later chapters).
Some examples on applying the four tones