5.11: Pinyin notes and practice

Toneless sylllables

As you have observed, not all syllables in Mandarin have a tone, eg: the second syllables in xíngli and máng ma. In this respect, Mandarin contrasts with some of the regional languages such as Cantonese, in which most syllables are toned. There are several types of toneless syllable (called qīngshēng ‘light-tone’) in standard Mandarin:

(i) Particles such as ma, ne and ba never appear with a full tone, and so we can only write them with qīngshēng.

(ii) Many words show qīngshēng in the final syllable: shūfu ‘comfortable’, or wǒmen ‘we; us’. On the evidence of compounds and other relatable expressions, these toneless syllables often turn out to have fully toned versions: shūfu has an adverbial form, shūshufúfú in which final fú appears with a rising tone. But dictionaries list words such as wǒmen and shūfu without tone on the second syllable, and we will do the same.

(iii) Certain words (syllables) are toned in some contexts, toneless in others: bú lèi (with bu toned) but hǎo bu hǎo (with bu toneless). We will follow pronunciation in such cases, writing the tone in citation in contexts where it is pronounced, but omitting it in appropriate grammatical contexts.

(iv) Finally, the incidence of qīngshēng varies with the rate and formality of speech as well as the region (with the northeast being particularly susceptible to toneless syllables). Thus in fast speech, jīntiān ‘today’ may be pronounced jīntian, without tone on tian. In these cases, we will still write the full tone, using current dictionaries as our guide.

For students’ purposes, the general rule is: you are always safe in writing the word in its lexical, careful, slow speech form, e.g.: wǒmen, shūfu, hǎo bù hǎo, jīntiān.

a) Writing changed tones

In this text, we do not write the changed tone for combinations of low tones; we write hěn hǎo, and apply the rule. This accords with the standard rules for writing pinyin entries in dictionaries or in continuous text. We do make an exception in writing the changed tones for bu and yi, however: bù gāo but bú lèi; yì zhāng but yí ge.

A pinyin quirk

Standard pinyin writes shénme, zěnme (‘how’) and zánmen (‘we [inclusive]’), all with a medial ‘n’ that is not reflected in the pronunciation. This compares to other systems of transcription, such as Yale which writes shéme, National Romanization, which writes sherme (with the ‘r’ representing the rising tone), and Zhuyin Fuhao which writes ㄕㄜ ㄇㄜ, ie she me – none of them with an internal ‘n’. The reason pinyin writes a silent -n in these words has to do with the characters that represent them. The first syllable of shénme, zěnme and zánmen are written with characters that are, in other contexts, pronounced shèn (with falling tone), zěn and zán respectively. While one is tempted to rectify the system and simply write shéme, zěme and zámen in conformity with actual pronunciations, pinyin is now regarded as a standard transliteration in the Chinese speaking world and we should accept it as it is, if for no other reason than the fact that reference materials as well as computer input systems are based on it.

Tone combos (the next 6)

Recall the prototype examples of the six sets of tone combos presented in Unit 1: lǎoshī hái hǎo, zàijiàn, bú rè, hěn máng, bù gāo. Now we add six more combos – the first three all beginning with level-toned syllables – for a total of 12 of the 15.

7	8	9
Kūnmíng Zhōngwén huānyíng	jīchǎng Wēiruǎn (Microsoft) Qīnghǎi	chīfàn qī hào tiānqì
10	11	12
Héféi Yúnnán tóngxué (classmate)	qǐngwèn hǎokàn yǎnjìng	zìdiǎn dìtiě (underground train) Hànyǔ

Exercise 7

a) Place the tone marks over the following words. (You may need to review the appropriate part of the lesson on sounds and symbols.)

level tone	jie	qiao	nao	jiu	cui
low	zei	pou	shao	xiao	bie
rising	xue	bei	tuo	zhui	liao

b) Now focus on the problematical initials – those found on lines 3,4,5 of our initial chart. Assign a tone, and the practice reading down:

ti	ta	dang		dou	dao
ci	ca	zang	si	zou	zao
ch!i	ch!a	zhang	shi	zhou	zhao
qi	qia	jiang	xi	jiu	jiao