4 tones in Mandarin

After reading my first two blogs, if you haven’t studied any Chinese, you may wonder what the numbers are behind the pinyin. Well, let me explain it to you in this blog.

Chinese is a tonal language. Mandarin, the official Chinese language, has four tones and a neutral tone. The first tone is a high, level tone. That is when we put a number 1 after the pinyin. It sounds like when singing the note "la". The second tone is a rising tone. That is when we put a number 2 after the pinyin. It sounds like "far" when asking "Is it far?" The third tone is a falling-and-rising tone that starts mid-low, moves to the bottom of your voice and then rises to the middle. That is when we put a number 3 after the pinyin. It sounds like when you say "so?" irritably. The fourth tone is a falling tone. That is when we put a number 4 after the pinyin. It sounds like when you adamantly saying "No!".

If you are interested to find more information about the tones, please click here, you will get a better understanding.