Chinese Tone Trainer

The four tones

Linguists describe Mandarin tones with Chao tone letters: the speaker's pitch range is divided into five levels, and each tone is written as the pitch it starts and ends on. It is a compact way to say exactly what your voice should do.

Why tones are hard for English speakers

English uses pitch for intonation — it colours a whole sentence and changes with emotion. Mandarin uses pitch inside a single syllable, and changing it changes the word. So the habit you have to break is treating pitch as decoration rather than as part of the consonant-vowel sequence.

There is a second problem: you cannot hear your own mistakes. When you speak, bone conduction and your own expectation of what you meant to say both distort what you perceive. This is exactly why a visual pitch curve helps more than another listen-and-repeat drill.

Common mistakes

• Third tone taken too literally. In isolation it is a full 214 dip, but in normal speech it is usually just a low, slightly creaky tone (the "half third"). Practise the full dip first — it trains the low register.
• Second tone starting too high. If you start near your top, there is nowhere left to rise, and it flattens into something that sounds like the first tone.
• Fourth tone too shallow. A gentle fall sounds like a neutral tone. The fourth tone drops from your highest to your lowest pitch, and it is short.
• First tone drifting. A small rise or fall in the middle turns a steady 55 into something that listeners hear as a different tone.

Tone changes you should know

Once single tones are stable, the next step is the regular changes that happen between syllables:

• Two third tones. The first becomes a second tone: 你好 nǐ hǎo is pronounced ní hǎo.
• 不 bù and 一 yī. Both change tone depending on what follows. 不是 bú shì, 一个 yí ge, 一天 yì tiān.
• The neutral tone. Some syllables lose their tone entirely and become short and unstressed, as in 妈妈 māma.

Questions

What are the four tones in Mandarin Chinese?

Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone. Using Chao tone letters (a 5-point scale), the first tone is 55 (high and level), the second is 35 (rising), the third is 214 (dipping), and the fourth is 51 (falling). The tone is part of the word — mā, má, mǎ and mà are four different words.

Why can I not hear the difference between the second and third tone?

Both change pitch, so beginners often hear them as "the ones that move". The difference is direction and target: the second tone rises from mid to high, while the third tone falls to your lowest pitch and only then rises. Practising them as a pair, and watching your own pitch curve, resolves this faster than listening alone.

Is my recording uploaded anywhere?

No. The recording is analysed entirely inside your browser using the Web Audio API, and the audio never leaves your device. Nothing is stored on a server.

Do tones change in real speech?

Yes. Two third tones in a row turn the first into a second tone (你好 nǐ hǎo → ní hǎo), and 不 bù and 一 yī change tone depending on the syllable that follows. Learn the citation tones first, then the sandhi rules.