There are four tones in Mandarin. The tone marks can be found above the vowel in the pinyin (Chinese phonetic transcription).
It's important to get the tones correct as they can mean something very different - see below!
The four tone marks are:
The first tone
High
mā
妈 (mother)
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The second tone
Middle rising
má
麻 (linen)
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The third tone
Low dipping
mǎ
马 (horse)
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The fourth tone
High falling
mà
骂 (scold)
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In some of the sections, you will see some words without a tone mark.
These indicate unstressed syllables and can occur either:
1. as question word at the end of a sentence, e.g. nǐ hǎo ma 你好吗? (you good?)
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or
2. as the second word of a phrase made of two identical characters, e.g. xìe xie 谢谢 (thank you)
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Finally, the third tone can be very tricky! When there are two third tone characters that come together,
we say the first one with the second tone (although we still use the third tone mark), e.g. nǐ hǎo 你好 (hello)
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