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
1st tone followed by 2nd tone
1st tone followed by 4th tone
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
2nd tone followed by 2nd tone
2nd tone followed by 4th tone
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
4th tone followed by 2nd tone
4th tone followed by 4th tone
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:
Neutral Tone following 2nd tone
A neutral tone is pronounced as a middle tone after a 2nd tone syllable (around 3), for example:
Neutral Tone following 3rd tone
A neutral tone is pronounced as a half-high tone after a 3rd tone syllable, for example:
Neutral Tone following 4th tone
A neutral tone is pronounced as a low tone after a 4th tone syllable (around 1), for example:
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.