Learn Mandarin Chinese – Combining Tones (Lesson 14)

5.5K views on YouTube

Languages

Here you will learn special rules in combining tones, and how to say and distinguish tones in sequence. We’ll take a look at every possible tone combination.
Become multilingual today with Lenguin’s comprehensive language courses.

║ Let’s Get Multi
╚════════════════════════════════════════

Practice what you learned in this video ►► http://lenguin.com/yt

Subscribe to get multi! ►► http://lenguin.com/yt/subscribe

Watch the entire course free ►► http://lenguin.com/yt/chinese

║ Support
╚════════════════════════════════════════

♥ ♥ Want to help us grow? We want to make lots of courses. ♥ ♥

♥ ♥ Help us reach that goal, visit ► http://lenguin.com/support ♥ ♥

║ More
╚════════════════════════════════════════

Next Lesson ► {NEXT}

♫ Listen to the Lenguin soundtrack ► http://lenguin.com/ost

║ Connect
╚════════════════════════════════════════

Like us on Facebook ► http://fb.com/LenguinPenguin

Pin us on Pinterest ► https://pinterest.com/LenguinPenguin

║ Sections
╚════════════════════════════════════════

Neutral Tone Words – 1:06
Neutral Tone – 1:22
High-neutral – 2:12
Rising-neutral – 2:28
Low-neutral – 3:05
Falling-neutral – 3:17
Neutral Tones – 3:36
3rd Tone – 4:06
Low-Low – 4:55
Tone Chart 1 – 6:04
Tone Chart 2 – 7:01

Download them here ► https://lenguin.com/learn/chinese/combining-tones/gallery

║ Credits
╚════════════════════════════════════════

Producer – Fame Ketover

Writers – John Harvey, Lucille Barale, Roberta Barry, Thomas Madden, Susan Pola

Script Supervisor – Fame Ketover

Chinese Speakers – Chuan Chao, Ying-chih Chen, Hsiao-jung Chen, Eva Diao, Jan Hu, Tsung-mi Li, Yunhui Yang

Original Music – Fame Ketover

Editor – Fame Ketover

Special Thanks – Check our Patreon Page to have your name listed here

Stock Imagery – Wikimedia Commons, Shutterstock

║ Lesson Transcript
╚════════════════════════════════════════

Full transcript ► https://lenguin.com/learn/chinese/combining-tones/transcript

Partial transcript
—————————————-——-
Hi, I’m Fame Ketover of Lenguin.com and this is Mandarin Chinese. In this lesson we’re going to unite the powers of the tones. Oh, and we’re also going to talk about the neutral tone.
So we’ve seen how tones work in single syllables. Now we’re going to see what happens when we combine tones. Most of our examples will be place names. We’ll mainly looking at sequences of tones, but our examples just happen to review all the vowel and consonant spellings we’ve covered. In some of the previous lessons, we’ve already come across syllables in what we call the neutral tone, that is, unstressed syllables which cannot be assigned to any of the four tones.
Some examples of these words that we’ve seen are:
xiānsheng
xiǎojie
nǐ ne
tàitai

The neutral tone is actually slightly different after each of the four full tones.
So let’s go ahead and attach a neutral tone syllable to a syllable of each tone and compare the sounds.
fēi le
féi le
fěi le
fèi le

Notice that there is no tone mark over the neutral tone syllable in the Pinyin. A toneless syllable, or what we call a syllable in the neutral tone, has a definite pitch, but this pitch doesn’t belong to the syllable the way a tone does. Instead it’s determined by the tone of the preceding syllable, as shown here. {point to shoulder}
Notice the different heights of the dots representing the neutral tone, and listen for the corresponding different pitches of the neutral tone as the speaker reads the syllables.
fēi le
féi le
fěi le
fèi le

After the high tone, the pitch of the neutral tone is almost at the bottom. Listen for the drop and try imitating it.
fēi le
fēi le
fēi le

After the rising tone, the pitch of the neutral tone is in the middle. Again, listen for the drop, and try to imitate it.
féi le
féi le
féi le

The low tone will stay low before a neutral tone. There was no rising tail. As a matter of fact, the low tone only has its rising tail when nothing immediately follows it. We’ll go into this in a moment. After this tailless low tone, which is sometimes called the half third tone, the pitch of the neutral tone is near the top.