Chinese tones

This article summarizes the phonology (the sound system, or in more general terms, the pronunciation) of Standard Chinese (Standard Mandarin).

Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Actual production varies widely among speakers, as they inadvertently introduce elements of their native dialects (although television and radio announcers are chosen for their pronunciation accuracy and standard accent). Elements of the sound system include not only the segments – the vowels and consonants of the language – but also the tones that are applied to each syllable. Standard Chinese has four main tones, in addition to a neutral tone used on weak syllables.

This article represents phonetic values using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), noting correspondences chiefly with the pinyin system for transcription of Chinese text. For correspondences with other systems, see the relevant articles, such as Wade–Giles, bopomofo (zhuyin), Gwoyeu Romatzyh, etc., and Romanization of Chinese.

The following table shows the consonant sounds of Standard Chinese, transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The sounds shown in parentheses are frequently not analyzed as separate phonemes; for more on these, see Alveolo-palatal series below. Excluding these, there are 19 consonant phonemes in the inventory.

Between pairs of stops or affricates having the same place and manner of articulation, the primary distinction is not voiced vs. voiceless (as in French), but unaspirated vs. aspirated (as in Icelandic and Scottish Gaelic). The unaspirated stops and affricates may however become voiced in weak syllables (see Syllable reduction, below). Such pairs are represented in the pinyin system mostly using letters which in Romance languages generally denote voiceless/voiced pairs (for example [p] and [b]), or in Germanic languages often denotes fortis/lenis pairs (for example initial aspirated voiceless/unaspirated voiced pairs such as [pʰ] and [b]). However, in pinyin they denote aspirated/unaspirated pairs, for example /pʰ/ and /p/ are represented with p and b respectively.

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