Chinese Tones: The Complete Guide to All Four (Plus Neutral)

TL;DR: Chinese tones are pitch patterns that change a word’s meaning. Standard Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone: first (high and level), second (rising), third (low and dipping), and fourth (falling). Tones are relative to your own voice range, not fixed notes. Each tone is written with a mark over the main vowel, and tones interact in pairs, so practising them in two-syllable words matters as much as practising them alone. Listening to many different native voices, then producing the tones and getting feedback, is the approach the research supports best.

Key takeaways:

• Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone. The same syllable means a different word in each tone, as in 诗 (shī), 十 (shí), 史 (shǐ), and 是 (shì).
• Tones describe relative pitch within your own range, so you do not need to match a particular note. Shape and relative height are what count.
• Each tone has a typical slip for English speakers, such as drifting downward on the first tone or dipping and rising on every third tone.
• There are 16 combinations of the four tones in two-syllable words, plus neutral-tone endings. Practising pairs is where tones start to sound like real Chinese.
• A small, well-known training study found American learners improved their tone identification after listening to many native voices. The result is encouraging, but it was a small study and the benefit varies by person.

Tones are the first thing most people hear about Mandarin and the last thing they feel confident about. The good news is that the system is small and fully learnable: four tones, one neutral tone, and a handful of interactions between them.

This guide goes tone by tone: how each one sounds, how to make it, and the slip English speakers most often make. It also covers how tones are written, all 16 two-syllable combinations with real words, and a practice routine. If you want the wider picture first, our complete guide to Chinese pronunciation places tones alongside initials, finals, and tone changes.

Chinese Tones | The Whole System in One Table

Mandarin Tones | Pitch Is Relative, Not Absolute

The Four Chinese Tones | One at a Time

Chinese Tone Marks and Tone Numbers | How Tones Are Written

Tones in Chinese | All 16 Two-Syllable Combinations

Chinese Tones for English Speakers | Why They Feel Hard and What Research Shows

Mandarin Tone Practice | A Routine That Fits the Evidence

Chinese Tones | Common Mistakes

Frequently Asked Questions

The Whole System in One Table

Chinese tones are pitch patterns that change a word’s meaning. Standard Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral tone: first (high and level), second (rising), third (low and dipping), and fourth (falling). Each is written with a mark over the main vowel, and the same syllable means a different word in each tone.

*Chao numerals describe pitch on a scale from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) within your own range. 55 is high and level, 35 rises from the middle to the top, 214 dips to the bottom and comes back up, and 51 falls from the top to the bottom.

If you only want to know why people argue about “four or five” tones, that is covered in the pronunciation guide. Here we focus on how the tones work and how to practise them.

Pitch Is Relative, Not Absolute

Tones are not musical notes. A deep male voice, a high child’s voice, and your own voice all produce the same four tones, because each tone is defined relative to the speaker’s own range. That is what the Chao numerals capture: 5 is the top of your range and 1 is the bottom of it.

This has two practical consequences.

For speaking: do not try to hit a particular pitch. Find a comfortable range, then make the shapes: level, rising, dipping, falling. A high first tone for you may be a mid-range note for someone else, and that is fine.

For listening: you judge a speaker’s tones against that speaker’s own range, which is part of why hearing many different voices helps. We come back to this in the research section.

The Four Chinese Tones: One at a Time

First tone: high and level

• How to make it: start near the top of your comfortable range and hold it steady, like holding a single note.
• Typical slip: letting the pitch drift downward or lift slightly at the end, which is how English stressed syllables often behave.
• Practise with: 妈 (mā), 书 (shū), 天 (tiān), 开 (kāi)

Second tone: rising

• How to make it: start around the middle of your range and rise to the top, a bit like the “What?” of mild surprise in English.
• Typical slip: not rising far enough, so it sounds like a first tone, or starting too low, so it blurs with the third tone.
• Practise with: 麻 (má), 国 (guó), 人 (rén), 来 (lái)

Third tone: low and dipping

• How to make it: drop to the bottom of your range. The full shape dips and then rises, but you hear the full dip-and-rise mainly when a syllable is said alone or ends a phrase. In the middle of a sentence it is usually just the low part. Many speakers also use a slightly creaky voice at the lowest point.
• Typical slip: adding the full rise to every third tone, which sounds exaggerated, or not going low enough, which blurs it with the second tone.
• Practise with: 马 (mǎ), 好 (hǎo), 我 (wǒ), 水 (shuǐ)

Fourth tone: falling

• How to make it: start high and drop quickly to the bottom of your range, like a firm “No!” or “Stop!”
• Typical slip: starting too low or not falling far enough, which makes it sound weak or blurs it with its neighbours.
• Practise with: 骂 (mà), 是 (shì), 看 (kàn), 去 (qù)

Neutral tone: light and short

• How to make it: say the syllable quickly and lightly, without giving it a tone of its own. Its pitch follows the syllable before it, and in many descriptions it tends to be higher after a third tone and lower after a fourth.
• Typical slip: giving it a full tone, which makes speech sound stiff.
• Practise with: 吗 (ma), 的 (de), 谢谢 (xièxie), 我们 (wǒmen)

Some words change meaning depending on whether a syllable is neutral or full: 东西 (dōngxi) means “thing,” while 东西 (dōngxī) means “east and west.” The neutral tone, called 轻声 (qīngshēng), is part of the word, not an optional extra.

Tone Marks and Tone Numbers | How Tones Are Written

In Pinyin, tones are shown by a mark over the main vowel: ā, á, ǎ, à. If a syllable has several vowels, the mark goes on a when there is one, otherwise on o or e, and in the combinations iu and ui it goes on the second vowel. The neutral tone has no mark. The wider Pinyin system is covered in our guide to learning Pinyin properly.

You will also see tones written as numbers after the syllable. Some dictionaries, textbooks, and typing tools write mā as ma1, má as ma2, mǎ as ma3, and mà as ma4. The neutral tone appears as 5, 0, or no number at all, depending on the source. Taiwan’s Zhuyin (Bopomofo) system writes tones with its own marks instead.

All of these are labels for the same four shapes. What matters is learning the sounds with audio, not memorising the notation.

All 16 Two-Syllable Combinations

Tones behave differently in sequence than alone, so two-syllable words are where practice starts to pay off. There are 16 combinations of the four tones. Here is one common word for each.

*Two third tones in a row trigger a tone change: the first is pronounced like a second tone, so 你好 (nǐ hǎo) sounds close to “ní hǎo.” That and the other common changes are covered in the sandhi section of the pronunciation guide and in our breakdown of why Mandarin is genuinely hard to learn.

A third tone before any other tone is usually the low half-form described above.

Neutral-tone endings follow the same pattern after each tone:

Why They Feel Hard and What Research Shows

English speakers use pitch too, but to signal questions, emphasis, and emotion, not to tell words apart. Mandarin makes pitch part of the word, so your ear and voice have to treat it as part of the word’s identity. That is a new habit rather than a new sound. Research backs this being a lasting difficulty: Pelzl, Lau, Guo and DeKeyser (2021, Studies in Second Language Acquisition) found persistent difficulty perceiving and using Mandarin tones even among advanced learners.

There is also encouraging evidence about what helps. In a widely cited study, Wang, Spence, Jongman and Sereno (1999, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America) trained eight American learners of Mandarin to identify tones in words spoken by several native talkers, over eight sessions across two weeks. Average identification accuracy rose by about 21 percent, the gains carried over to new words and new speakers, and they were still present at a six-month test. The same research group later reported gains in production as well (Wang, Jongman and Sereno, 2003).

Three honest caveats. It was a small study. Its training schedule is a research design, not a promise about how quickly any learner will improve. And later research found the benefit of this kind of training varies with the individual listener’s aptitude. But the practical lesson is sound and consistent with how tones work: listen to many different native voices, not just one, because each voice has its own range and your ear has to learn the shapes, not one speaker’s pitch.

The second lesson is the one that runs through this whole site: tone errors are hard to hear in your own speech, so self-checking has a ceiling, which we cover in our guide to learning Chinese by yourself.

Mandarin Tone Practice: A Routine That Fits the Evidence

There is no fixed timetable for any of this, and progress depends on your starting point and how consistently you practise. The order is what matters.

1. Listen before you speak, with several native voices. Compare minimal sets such as 诗 (shī), 十 (shí), 史 (shǐ), and 是 (shì), and 衣 (yī), 姨 (yí), 椅 (yǐ), and 意 (yì). Use recordings from different speakers, not one voice on repeat.
2. Trace the shape as you say it. Draw each contour in the air with your hand while you speak. It links the movement of your voice to the movement of your hand.
3. Drill the 16 pairs, slowly and then at natural speed. Use the table above. Say each word several times, then mix the order.
4. Add neutral-tone words. Practise 妈妈 (māma), 孩子 (háizi), 椅子 (yǐzi), and 爸爸 (bàba) so the light second syllable becomes automatic.
5. Move into phrases and shadow native audio. Repeat short native phrases in real time. The techniques are covered in our guide to Chinese speaking practice, and hearing the differences is its own skill, covered in our leveled approach to Chinese listening practice.
6. Record yourself, then get a native speaker to check. Recordings build the habit, but they cannot reliably reveal your own tone errors. Our free Mandarin pronunciation trainer is a place to practise sounds between lessons.

Practise this routine with real-time correction in a free 7-day trial.

Common Mistakes

• Aiming for a fixed note. Tones are relative to your own range. Chase the shape and relative height, not a particular pitch.
• Dipping and rising on every third tone. The full dip-and-rise belongs mostly to isolated syllables and phrase endings. In the middle of a sentence, keep it low.
• Practising single syllables only. Mā, má, mǎ, mà is a good start, but real speech is tones in sequence. Move to pairs early.
• Skipping the neutral tone. Particles and many second syllables are meant to be light. Full tones everywhere sound clipped.
• Using English question intonation on top of the tones. Mandarin questions are mostly marked with words like 吗 (ma), so you rarely need to lift your pitch at the end, and doing so can blur the final tone.
• Trusting your own ear to confirm your tones. If you cannot reliably tell a tone apart in someone else’s speech, you usually cannot catch it in your own recording either.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Tones Are Learnable, and Faster With Someone Listening

Four tones, one neutral tone, a table of pairs, and a handful of tone changes: the system is smaller than its reputation. The hard part is hearing and producing the shapes reliably in real sentences, and that is where a native speaker’s ear earns its place.

Flexi Classes runs live 60-minute Mandarin classes with native teachers in small groups of up to five students, with real-time correction on tones and pronunciation. The 7-day free trial is a direct way to find out which of your tones already sound right and which ones do not.

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