{"id":5409,"date":"2015-06-08T06:07:54","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T06:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digmandarin.com\/?p=5409"},"modified":"2015-06-08T14:47:19","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T14:47:19","slug":"tones-prefer-company-part-ii-an-exciting-new-audio-visual-way-to-practice-to-practice-mandarin-tones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digmandarin.com\/tones-prefer-company-part-ii-an-exciting-new-audio-visual-way-to-practice-to-practice-mandarin-tones.html","title":{"rendered":"Tones Prefer Company! Part II – An exciting new audio-visual way to practice Mandarin tones"},"content":{"rendered":"

My last Digmandarin article \u201cTones Prefer Company!<\/a>\u201c generated a lot of interest, prompting me to pen this follow-up. The idea that tones should not be studied in isolation, and the limited usefulness of the classic \u201cm\u0101 m\u00e1 m\u01ce m\u00e0\u201d example, resonated with a lot of readers.<\/p>\n

It was also through my article that I found out about the great work being done by the folks over at SensibleChinese<\/a>, who coincidentally published an article at about the same time, championing tone pairs as an essential tool for mastering Chinese pronunciation. They put together the very useful chart below, showing the 20 tone pairs in standard Mandarin, with a familiar example for each. The 20 comes from the fact that a 2-character word can begin with one of the four tones, and end in one of the four or the fifth neutral tone.<\/p>\n

\"tones<\/a><\/p>\n

(For extra credit, note that 3-3 pairs are pronounced exactly the same as 2-3 pairs, so really there are only 19 unique Mandarin tone combinations \u2013 you can read more about why here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

To review the concept \u2013 if a Chinese 2-character word begins with 1st<\/sup> tone and ends with 1st<\/sup> tone, we put it in the 1-1 tone pair bucket. All words in the 1-1 bucket have the same intonation, so if you know one well, you can apply that pronunciation to all other words in that bucket. It helps to pick one familiar word as the label for that bucket. So you may call 1-1 words the \u201ctoday\u201d bucket or the \u201cairplane\u201d bucket. Let\u2019s give it a try.<\/p>\n

\"11\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Pinyin<\/strong><\/td>\nTranslation<\/strong><\/td>\nSimplified \/ Traditional<\/strong><\/td>\nAudio<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
J\u012bnti\u0101n<\/td>\ntoday<\/td>\n\u4eca\u5929<\/span><\/td>\n
     <\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div><\/span>