Learn about rules for tone changes
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| Hi everyone. |
| Welcome to The Ultimate Chinese Pronunciation Guide. |
| In this lesson, you'll learn a few rules which will require you to change the tone of a syllable, in a word or sentence. |
| Pinyin is quite useful for showing you how to pronounce something in Chinese, however it isn't a perfect system. |
| You'll need to learn these rules because it won't be reflected in the pinyin! |
| "NO FALLING AND RISING TONES NEXT TO EACH OTHER" |
| You cannot have two falling and rising tones next to each other. |
| When this happens, you need to pronounce every falling and rising tone -- except for the last one, as a rising tone. |
| 很好 |
| Here's an example with 3 falling and rising tones in a row. |
| 你很好 |
| OK. Now let's move on to the next tone change rule. |
| "TONE CHANGE FOR 不" |
| 不 |
| This character is a falling tone by itself. |
| However, if the following tone is *also* a falling tone, it will change to a rising tone. |
| 不是 |
| 不会 |
| 不错 |
| "TONE CHANGE FOR 一" |
| 一 |
| This character is a high tone by itself or when it's used as a number. |
| However for all other cases, if the following tone is a falling tone, it should be pronounced as a rising tone. |
| 一半 |
| 一步 |
| 一次 |
| And when the following tone is any other tone that *isn't* a falling tone, then it'll be pronounced as a falling tone. |
| 一般 |
| 一直 |
| 一起 |
| "QUIZ TIME" It's quiz time! |
| Let's see if you can apply these rules in the real world. |
| How should you pronounce the first character? |
| 不太 |
| The following character is a falling tone, so this character is pronounced with a rising tone. |
| What about this one? |
| 一些 |
| Since the following tone is a high tone, the first character is pronounced with a falling tone. |
| If the following tone would've been a falling tone, than this character would've been pronounced as a rising tone. |
| Okay, lucky last! |
| 好懂 |
| Remember, the first character is pronounced as a falling tone because you cannot have falling and rising tones next to each other. |
| In this lesson, you learnt a few tone change rules in Chinese! |
| In the next lesson, we'll review the material that we've covered in this series. |
| How did you do on the quiz? Please comment and share your thoughts! |
| See you in the next Ultimate Chinese Pronunciation Guide lesson! |
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