One of the first challenges for the Western speaker of Chinese to overcome in learning to speak Mandarin Chinese is the introduction of tones to a language. In English, a rising or falling tone does little other than indicate emphasis: The whiny \u201cWhat do you waaant?\u201d as opposed to \u201cWhat do you want!?\u201d Not so in Chinese. Differentiating between tones is the difference between knowing, for example, whether a person is asking the whereabouts of your mother, your hemp, or your horse. Misunderstand one sentence and you suddenly find yourself in a very confusing situation, especially since most conversations consist of much more than one lingering sentence. Picture the situation:<\/p>\n
Xiao Zhang (speaking Chinese of course):
\n\u201cDo you know where I can rent a horse? I\u2019d like to take a horse along the Great Wall. Want to come along?\u201d<\/p>\n
You:
\n\u201cUm. Run that by me one more time?\u201d<\/p>\n
While in practice, context makes a huge difference and it becomes relatively easy to know that Xiao Zhang doesn\u2019t want to rent a mother to take up to the Great Wall, not hearing or saying the correct tone more often than not just leads to confusion. To avoid this awkward situation, here\u2019s a brief primer for how to pronounce the tones in Mandarin Chinese. Second tone \u2032<\/strong> Think of this as a question. \u201cMa? Is that you?\u201d Third tone \u02c7<\/strong> Put on your super whiny voice, like you\u2019re 7 years old and your mom tells you that your buddy can\u2019t come over to spend the night. You\u2019re about to pout: \u201coh, c\u2019mon, MAaaAA.\u201d Slightly different, though, because you\u2019ve got to start high, about \u00be of where you are with the first \u201cdentist\u201d tone, drop down low, then take it up to full first tone and cut yourself off when you reach it. \u201cMAaaaAA.\u201d Requires a bit of practice, this one.<\/p>\n Fourth tone ` <\/strong> Your dog is about heed the call of nature on your carpet, but you\u2019ve spotted him in the nick of time, and you aren\u2019t pleased. Your dog\u2019s name is \u201cMa.\u201d Call him out with me now: \u201cMa! No! Outside!\u201d This tone is commonly known as the falling tone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the first challenges for the Western speaker of Chinese to overcome in learning to speak Mandarin Chinese is the introduction of tones to a language. In English, a rising or falling tone does little other than indicate emphasis: The whiny \u201cWhat do you waaant?\u201d as opposed to \u201cWhat do you want!?\u201d Not so…<\/p>\n
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\nFirst tone: \u00af <\/strong> Pretend you\u2019re at the dentist. Open up and say \u201cmaaa.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nKind of counter-intuitive, huh? This is a rising tone.<\/p>\n