21 Tones in Disyllabic Words

Although learners of Chinese often feel that it is more difficult to identify tones in words with more than one syllable, we just need to practice various combinations of these tones and get used to them.

Words starting with First Tone

1st tone followed by 1st tone

  1. kā fēi 咖啡
  2. bān jiā 搬家
  3. biāo bīng 标兵
  4. bīn fēn 缤纷


1st tone followed by 2nd tone

  1. hē chá 喝茶
  2. gōng yuán 公园
  3. dī lián 低廉
  4. diū rén 丢人


1st tone followed by 4th tone

  1. chū rù 出入
  2. dī jià 低价
  3. fēng qì 风气
  4. xiāng cài 香菜


Listening Quiz 1

Listen to the audio and give the tone for the second syllable you hear in each disyllabic word.  Enter 1 for first tone, 2 for second tone, or 4 for fourth tone.

Words starting with Second Tone

2nd tone followed by 1st tone

  1. chéng gōng 成功
  2. huáng guā 黄瓜
  3. qí zhōng 其中
  4. wén zhāng 文章


2nd tone followed by 2nd tone

  1. chúfáng 厨房
  2. tóng xué 同学
  3. rén mín 人民
  4. yún nán 云南


2nd tone followed by 4th tone

  1. tiáo jiàn 条件
  2. qín cài 芹菜
  3. chún dù 纯度
  4. cái zhèng 财政


Listening Quiz 2

Listen to the audio and give the tone for the second syllable you hear in each disyllabic word.  Enter 1 for first tone, 2 for second tone, or 4 for fourth tone.

Words starting with Fourth Tone

4th tone followed by 1st tone

  1. qì wēn 气温
  2. kè tīng 客厅
  3. zhù jūn 驻军
  4. chuàng shāng 创伤


4th tone followed by 2nd tone

  1. qù nián 去年
  2. fèng lí 凤梨
  3. kè rén 客人
  4. qìqiú 气球


4th tone followed by 4th tone

  1. qù xiàng 去向
  2. sòng dào 送到
  3. chuàng zào 创造
  4. mèng jìng 梦境


Listening Quiz 3

Listen to the audio and give the tone for the second syllable you hear in each disyllabic word.  Enter 1 for first tone, 2 for second tone, or 4 for fourth tone.

Neutral Tones

The neutral tone, or qingsheng (light sound) never appears at the beginning of a word. It usually occurs in the second syllable of a disyllabic word, between two stressed syllables, or when part of a phrase. Neutral-toned syllables are short and light and are written without tone markings. The pitch height of a neutral tone is influenced by the tone of the syllable immediately proceeding it.

Neutral Tone following 1st tone

In general, a neutral tone is pronounced as a half-low tone after a 1st tone syllable (around 2 in the scale 1-5 where 1 is low and 5 high), for example:

  1. mā-ma 妈妈
  2. tīng de dŏng 听得懂
  3. chū fā ba 出发吧


Neutral Tone following 2nd tone

A neutral tone is pronounced as a middle tone after a 2nd tone syllable (around 3), for example:

  1. yé ye 爷爷
  2. nán de duō 难得多
  3. xìng wú de 姓吴的


Neutral Tone following 3rd tone

A neutral tone is pronounced as a half-high tone after a 3rd tone syllable, for example:

  1. năi nai 奶奶
  2. zŏu bu kāi 走不开
  3. lái wăn le 来晚了


Neutral Tone following 4th tone

A neutral tone is pronounced as a low tone after a 4th tone syllable (around 1), for example:

  1. bà ba 爸爸
  2. kàn bu jiàn 看不见
  3. rán hòu ne? 然后呢


Listening Quiz 4

Listen to the audio and give the tone for the first syllable you hear in each disyllabic word.  Enter 1 for first tone, 2 for second tone, or 4 for fourth tone.

Listening Quiz 5

Listen to the audio and give the tone for each syllables in the disyllabic words. Enter1 for the 1st tone, 2 for the 2nd tone, 3 for the 3rd tone, 4 for the 4th tone and 5 for the neutral tone. Please use “/” to separate the two tones. For example, if you hear hóng huā, please enter  2/1.

Dictation Quiz

Listen to the audio and provide the complete Pinyin of what you hear using numbers to indicate the tone.  So if you hear chuàng shōu, type chuang4 shou1.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Ting Yi Ting Copyright © by Sheree Willis and Yan Li is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book