Pinyin tones: the four marks, where they sit, and what changes when they meet
Pinyin writes Mandarin in the Latin alphabet with one mark over a vowel. The mark is the tone, and the tone is part of the word.
How many tones does Mandarin have?
Four, plus a neutral one with no mark. The tone is not an accent on top of a word — it belongs to it, the way a vowel does: 买 mǎi is buy and 卖 mài is sell.
| Mark | Tone | Pitch | A word from the catalogue |
|---|---|---|---|
| ā | First | high and level | 安静 quiet, peaceful |
| á | Second | rising, as in an English question | 白色 white (colour) |
| ǎ | Third | dipping down, then up | 可以 can, may |
| à | Fourth | falling sharply | 半夜 midnight, the dead of night |
| a | Neutral | short, light, no shape of its own | 部分 part, section, portion — the second syllable, fen, carries no mark |
Where does the tone mark go?
On one vowel, chosen by three rules in order:
- If there is an a or an e, the mark goes on it: hǎo, xiè.
- Otherwise, in ou, the mark goes on the o: gǒu.
- Otherwise it goes on the last vowel: shuǐ, jiù.
Those three rules place every mark in this catalogue's 4,868 words, and they are the rules this app follows when it prints a syllable above a character.
What about ü?
ü is a vowel of its own — 女 nǚ, 绿 lǜ — and not a decorated u. After j, q, x and y it is written without the dots (ju, qu, xu, yu) because those initials never take a plain u, so nothing is ambiguous. On a keyboard it is usually typed as v.
What is tone sandhi?
Some tones change when they meet another. Three cases cover almost everything a learner needs:
Two third tones in a row
The first becomes a second tone. 你好 is written nǐ hǎo and said ní hǎo. The writing does not change; the saying does.
不 bù
Before a fourth tone it becomes bú: 不是 bú shì. Everywhere else it stays bù.
一 yī
Alone and at the end of a number it is yī. Before a fourth tone it becomes yí (一个 yí gè); before a first, second or third tone it becomes yì (一天 yì tiān).
This catalogue writes the sandhi form where a word is normally said that way, so the pinyin above a character is what a learner should say, not a form to convert in their head.
Do I have to type the tone marks to search?
Not in this app. The 汉字 tab matches a reading with or without its marks, and folds ü to v, so zhang, zhǎng and zhāng all find 长. Pasting the character itself works too.
Where do the tones show up in the app?
Above every character, one syllable at a time, on every screen that shows a word — so which sound belongs to which character is never a guess. The same applies on every theme page and every character page on this site.