Mandarin

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Here we illustrate the tonal contrasts of Mandarin, including tone sandhi as well as fricatives and affricates combined with tone and Mandarin vowels.

Tone in Mandarin

This example demonstrates several transcription conventions for tones. So-called tone-letters are mainly used for contour-tone languages. It represents pitch movement on a 5-point scale (1=lowest, 5=highest) by means of so-called tone-letters consisting of a vertical reference line on the right preceded by a line indicating pitch. Often the tone is also explicitly described by a series of numbers on the 5-point scale (it may not actually always be possible to reproduce all such sequences typographically as a tone letter). Even though this system is iconic, it is nonetheless a stylized representation, i.e it should not be assumed that it captures all details of actual pitch contours.

This system can be cumbersome to use in actual transcriptions, for many languages each tone has conventionally been assigned a tone number. For example, the high level tone in Mandarin is referred to as Tone number 1. A syllable with this tone can then be simply notated by appending the tone number as a superscript, e.g ma¹.

A further advantage of using tone numbers is that it provides a convenient way of describing tone sandhi. This refers to the often very complex modifications of tones when pronounced in sequence. A commonly quoted example for Mandarin is that in a sequence of two Tone-3 syllables, the first syllable is pronounced with Tone 2.

Note: Words are played automatically in the order below

Tone Number	Description	Pitch	Tone Letter
1	high level	55	˥	ma ("mother")
2	high rising	35	˦˥	ma ("hemp")
3	low falling rising	214	˨˩˦	ma ("horse")
4	high falling	51	˥˩	ma ("scold")

Short Story

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Listen here to a complete short story using only one syllable, but different tones.

Tone Sandhi in Mandarin

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Most tone languages have a number of rules that modify tones when spoken in a sequence, i.e when spoken in normal phrases rather than in isolation. One of the most well-known cases is in Mandarin Chinese: when two Tone-3 syllables occur in sequence, the first one is changed to Tone 2.
Three examples are given. Each consists of 3 syllables. They are spoken first as isolated syllables (without sandhi) and then as a phrase (with sandhi). The tone of the middle syllable changes in each case from Tone 3 to Tone2 (indicated by “3>2").

mai hau chou
3 3>2 3
buy good wine
Play

chi shuei guo
1 3>2 3
eat water fruit
Play

wo hen ho
3 3>2 3
I very good
Play

Mandarin Fricatives, Affricates and Tone

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Mandarin has three contrasting places of articulation for fricatives that are rather similar to those found in Polish. Here we will use the traditional terms alveolar, retroflex and palatal, even though the last two terms may be misleading: both these sounds are postalveolar. See the separate demo on Polish for discussion of the articulation of these sounds.

Mandarin also contrasts these places of articulation in affricates, and is, in addition, fairly unusual in having both unaspirated and aspirated affricate series.

This material combines the three places of articulation with the 4 tones of Mandarin, keeping the target syllable as constant as possible. The sounds are spoken in a carrier phrase meaning something like “X is in YX” (or “syllable X is part of word YX”). Thus the target fricative is found in both absolute initial position, and phrase-internally. The tables give the word corresponding to YX. The number indicates the tone of syllable Y (in a few cases target syllable X comes before syllable Y). The transliterations are in PinYin. Speaker 1 comes from Taiwan, speaker 2 from Beijing. The retroflex approximant is given as additional material.

Click here for a table of the target words written in Chinese characters.

Speaker 1. Male, Taiwan

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Fricatives


Sa-Niau⁴ ("piss")	Sa (nonword)	Po¹-Sa ("to sprinkle")	Pu²-Sa ("Buddha")
Ni²-Sha ("sand")	Dzuo⁴-Sha ("do what")	Dzhuang¹-Sha ("pretend stupid")	Xiong¹-Sha ("terrible man")
Long²-Xia ("lobster")	San¹-Xia (location name)	Jiau¹-Xiau ("tiny")	Lo²-Xia ("downstairs")

Unaspirated Affricates


Bau¹-Za ("to bind")	Da³-Za ("to drudge")	Qin¹-Zau ("morning")	Ji²-Zau ("rash")
Ren¹-Zha ("bad guy")	Zha-Men² ("gate-door")	DZha-Dong⁴ ("to wink")	Mu⁴-Zha (location name)
Hwei²-Jia ("go home")	Lien²-Jia ("face")	Dzuo⁴-Jia ("cheat")	Jiang⁴-Jia ("down-price")

Aspirated Affricates


Ban³-Ca ("eraser")	Shuei³-Cau ("water trough")	Hwa¹-Cau ("flower and grass")	Cau-Mi³ ("kind of rice")
Dau¹-Cha ("knife and fork")	Jin³-Cha ("police")	Chau-Cai⁴ ("cooking")	Chu¹-Cha ("make mistake")
Qia¹-Si ("choke to death")	Lu⁴-Qiau ("overhead bridge")	Guai¹-Qiau ("clever")	Jie¹-Qia ("contact with")

Retroflex Approximant


	Rang¹-Rang¹ ("to shout")	Qio²-Rau ("beg for spare")	Da³-Rau ("to interrupt")	Uei²-Rau ("to encircle")

Speaker 2. Female, Beijing

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Fricatives


Sa-Niau⁴ ("piss")	Sa (nonword)	Po¹-Sa ("to sprinkle")	Pu²-Sa ("Buddha")
Ni²-Sha ("sand")	Dzuo⁴-Sha ("do what")	Dzhuang¹-Sha ("pretend stupid")	Xiong¹-Sha ("terrible man")
Long²-Xia ("lobster")	San¹-Xia (location name)	Jiau¹-Xiau ("tiny")	Lo²-Xia ("downstairs")

Unaspirated Affricates


Bau¹-Za ("to bind")	Da³-Za ("to drudge")	Qin¹-Zau ("morning")	Ji²-Zau ("rash")
Ren¹-Zha ("bad guy")	Zha-Men² ("gate-door")	DZha-Dong⁴ ("to wink")	Mu⁴-Zha (location name)
Hwei²-Jia ("go home")	Lien²-Jia ("face")	Dzuo⁴-Jia ("cheat")	Jiang⁴-Jia ("down-price")

Aspirated Affricates


Ban³-Ca ("eraser")	Shuei³-Cau ("water trough")	Hwa¹-Cau ("flower and grass")	Cau-Mi³ ("kind of rice")
Dau¹-Cha ("knife and fork")	Jin³-Cha ("police")	Chau-Cai⁴ ("cooking")	Chu¹-Cha ("make mistake")
Qia¹-Si ("choke to death")	Lu⁴-Qiau ("overhead bridge")	Guai¹-Qiau ("clever")	Jie¹-Qia ("contact with")

Retroflex Approximant


	Rang¹-Rang¹ ("to shout")	Qio2-Rau ("beg for spare")	Da³-Rau ("to interrupt")	Uei²-Rau ("to encircle")

Mandarin Vowels

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The basic Mandarin monophthong vowels are (the English gloss is the meaning when spoken with Tone 1 (high, level)):

[a] “ah”; [i] “clothes”; [u] “black”; [y] “pedantry”; [μ] “take sides”

In addition (1) there is a rhotacized vowel:

[ɚ] “son”

In addition (2) there two sounds sometimes referred to as “apical vowels”. The IPA illustration refers to them as syllabic consonants. Their occurance is very restricted: either after dental fricatives and affricates, or after postalveolar fricatives and affricates. In the first case they are described as a laminal denti-alveolar approximant, in the second case as an apical post- alveolar approximant:

Case 1 “thoughts”; Case 2 “wet”

In addition (3) Mandarin has many diphthongs and triphthongs (not illustrated here).

Combinations of the rhotacized vowel with other vowels

There are many cases where the rhotacized vowel can be added to the syllable rhyme leading to a whole range of rhotacized vowel qualities (see Lee & Zee, 2003, p.111 for details).

Notes:
(1) In some cases the combination results in a new rhotacized vowel, e.g [a˞]
(2) When the original syllable ends in [ŋ], a nasalized, rhotacized vowel results

Listen to the examples from the table in a row:

tao pa ɚ	>	tao pa˞	("hilt")
ɕiao tɕi ɚ	>	ɕiao tɕiɚ	("chickling")
ɕiao tʂu ɚ	>	ɕiao tʂuɚ	("pigling")
ao ɚ	>	ao˞	("coat")
xuən ɚ	>	xuɚ	("soul")
xə tɕ^hyən ɚ	>	xə tɕ^hyɚ	("sociable")
tan xuaŋ ɚ	>	tan xua˞̃	("egg yolk")
ɕiao ɕiuŋ ɚ	>	ɕiao ɕiu˞̃	("little bear")

Audio Source:
Sounds of the Worlds Languages.
Schiefercorpus.

References:
Ladefoged, P. (2005): Vowels and consonants: an introduction to the sounds of languages. Malden: Blackwell.
Lee, W.-S./ Zee, E. (2003): Standard Chinese (Beijing). Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33(1), pp. 109-112.