Standard Chinese phonology

The phonology of Standard Mandarin is reproduced below. Actual reproduction varies widely among speakers, as people inadvertently introduce elements of their native dialects. By contrast, television and radio announcers are chosen for their pronunciation accuracy and standard accent.

Consonants

The following is the consonant inventory of Standard Mandarin, transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):

	Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Alveolo- palatal	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	m		n				ŋ
Plosive	p   pʰ		t   tʰ				k   kʰ
Affricate			t͡s   t͡sʰ	t͡ʂ   t͡ʂʰ	t͡ɕ   t͡ɕʰ ²
Fricative		f	s	ʂ	ɕ ²		x
Liquid			l	ɻ~ʐ ¹
Semivowel						j   ɥ ³	w ³

All but /ŋ/ occur in syllable onsets (as "initials"), whereas only /n/, /ŋ/, and /ɻ/ occur as syllable codas.

1. /ɻ/ is often transcribed as [ʐ] (a voiced retroflex fricative). This represents a variation in pronunciation among different speakers, rather than two different phonemes.
2. These are not always considered independent phonemes. See below.
3. These are commonly viewed as medials with null initials.

The voiceless unaspirated consonants [p t ts tɕ tʂ k] have voiced allophones [b d dz dʑ dʐ ɡ] respectively in toneless syllables.

The retroflex consonants are flat apical postalveolar (Ladefoged & Wu 1984; Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:150-154). See retroflex consonants.

The alveolo-palatal consonants  [t͡ɕ   t͡ɕʰ  ɕ] are in complementary distribution with the alveolar consonants  [t͡s   t͡sʰ  s], retroflex consonants  [t͡ʂ   t͡ʂʰ  ʂ], and velar consonants [k kʰ x], which they derive from historically. As a result, linguists prefer to classify  [t͡ɕ   t͡ɕʰ  ɕ] as allophones of the other three series. The Yale and Wade-Giles systems mostly treat the palatals as allophones of the retroflex consonants; Tongyong Pinyin mostly treats them as allophones of the alveolars; and Chinese braille treats them as allophones of the velars.

The collapse of the velar series into the alveolo-palatal in palatalizing environments took place only a few centuries ago. Before that point, some instances of modern  [t͡ɕ(ʰ)i] were instead [k(ʰ)i]. The change took place in the last two or three centuries at varying times in different areas, but not in the dialect used in the Manchu dynasty imperial court. This explains why some European transcriptions of Chinese names contain "ki-" or "k'i-". Examples are Peking for Beijing, Nanking, Chungking, "-kiang" for "-jiang" (= "river"), Fukien for Fujian (a province).

[t͡ɕ   t͡ɕʰ  ɕ] may be pronounced  [t͡sj   t͡sʰj  sj], which is characteristic of the speech of young women, and also of some men. This is considered rather effeminate and may also be substandard.

The null initial, written as an apostrophe in pinyin word-medially, is most commonly realized as [ɰ], though [n], [ŋ], [ɣ], and [ʔ] are common in nonstandard dialects of Mandarin; some of these correspond to null in Standard Mandarin but contrast with it in their dialect.

Corresponding chart in:

• Pinyin
• Zhuyin
• Gwoyeu Romatzyh

Vowels

Mandarin has approximately half a dozen vowels. Phonetically, the following phones may be distinguished:

• [a], in the sequences [a], [ja], [wa], [aɪ̯], [waɪ̯], [an], [wan]
• [ɑ], in [ɑʊ̯], [jɑʊ̯], [ɑŋ], [jɑŋ], [wɑŋ]
• [e], in [eɪ̯], [weɪ̯]
• [ɛ], in [jɛ], [jɛn], [ɥɛn] (and an interjection [ɛ])
• [œ], in [ɥœ]
• [o], in [oʊ̯], [joʊ̯]
• [ɔ], in [wɔ] and as [ɔ] after /p pʰ f m/ (and an interjection [ɔ])
• [ə], in [ən], [wən], [əŋ], [wəŋ]
• [ɤ], as the bare syllabic nucleus [ɤ]
• [z̩], as the bare syllabic nucleus [z̩] [despite the transcription, not actually a syllabic fricative] after the alveolar sibilants /t͡s   t͡sʰ s/
• [ʐ̩], as the bare syllabic nucleus [ʐ̩] after the retroflex sibilants /t͡ʂ  t͡ʂʰ ʂ ʐ/
• [i], in [i], [in], [iŋ]
• [ʊ], in [ʊŋ], [jʊŋ]
• [u], in [u]
• [y], in [y], [yn]

At first glance, these would appear to constitute a system of eight phonemes: /a/ ([a ~ ɑ]), /e/ ([e ~ ɛ ~ œ]), /o/ ([o ~ ɔ]), /ə/ ([ə ~ ɤ]), /ɨ/ ([z̩ ~ ʐ̩]), /i/ ([i]), /u/ ([ʊ ~ u]), and /y/ ([y]). However, the mid vowels /e/, /o/, /ə/ are in complementary distribution, and are therefore treated as a single phoneme /ə/. Exceptions are the bare vowels [ɛ] and [ɔ], which function only as exclamations and can be treated as outside of the core system (similar to the normal treatment of "hmm", "unh-unh", "shhh!" and other English exclamations that violate usual syllabic constraints), resulting in a six-vowel system.

It would also be possible to merge /ɨ/ and /i/, which are historically related, since they are also in complementary distribution, provided that the alveolo-palatal and retroflex consonant series are not themselves merged. The result is a five-vowel system of /a/, /ə/, /i/, /u/, and /y/.

A smaller and more abstract system analyzes the vowels /i/, /u/ and /y/ as the surface form of the glides /j, w, ɥ/ combined with a null meta-phoneme Ø. In this system, shown below, there are just two vowel nuclei, /a/ and /ə/; various allophones result from a preceding glide /j, w, ɥ/ (or null) and a coda /i~j, u~w, n, ŋ/ (or null; see erhua for the additional sequences afforded by the rhotic coda /ɻ/). (The minimal vowel /ɨ/ is ascribed to the surface manifestation of all three values being null.)

Nucleus	Coda	Medial
		Ø	j	w	ɥ
a	Ø	a	ja	wa
	i	aɪ̯		waɪ̯
	u	ɑʊ̯	jɑʊ̯
	n	an	jɛn	wan	ɥɛn
	ŋ	ɑŋ	jɑŋ	wɑŋ
ə	Ø	ɤ	jɛ	wɔ ~ ɔ ¹	ɥɛ ²
	i	eɪ̯		weɪ̯
	u	oʊ̯	joʊ̯
	n	ən	in	wən	yn
	ŋ	əŋ	iŋ	wəŋ ~ ʊŋ ³	jʊŋ
Ø		z̩~ʐ̩	i	u	y

¹ Both pinyin and zhuyin have an additional "o", used after "b p m f", which is distinguished from "uo", used after everything else. "o" is generally put into the first column instead of the third. However, in Beijing pronunciation, these are identical.
² Another way to represent the four finals of this line is: [ɰʌ jɛ wɔ ɥœ], which reflects Beijing pronunciation.
³ /wəŋ/ is pronounced [ʊŋ] when it follows an initial.

The sequence [jɛn] can be considered to be phonemically either /jən/ or /jan/; likewise [ɥɛn] could be either /ɥən/ or /ɥan/. Since [jɛn] and [ɥɛn] become [jɑɻ] and [ɥɑɻ] with the addition of a suffix /ɻ/, the latter interpretation is generally preferred.

Syllables

Mandarin syllables have the maximal form CGVC^T, where the first C is the initial consonant; G is one of the glides /j w ɥ/; V is a vowel (or diphthong); the second C is a coda, /n ŋ ɻ/ (if diphthongs like ou, ai are analyzed as V) or /n ŋ ɻ j w/ (if not); and ^T is the tone. In traditional Chinese phonology, C is called the "initial", G the "medial", and VF^T the "final" or "rime"; sometimes the medial is considered part of the rime.

Not counting tone distinctions or the rhotic coda, there are some 35 finals in Mandarin. They can be seen at:

• Pinyin
• Zhuyin#Another_comparison_table
• Gwoyeu Romatzyh

Tables of all syllables (excluding tone and rhotic coda) are at:

• Pinyin table
• Zhuyin table

The rhotic coda

Main article: Erhua

Standard Mandarin also uses a rhotic consonant, /ɻ/. This usage is a unique feature of Standard Mandarin; other dialects lack this sound. In Chinese, this feature is known as Erhua. There are two cases in which it is used:

1. In a small number of words, such as 二 èr "two", 耳 ěr "ear", etc. All of these words are pronounced [ɑɻ] with no initial consonant.
2. As a noun suffix -兒/-儿 -r. The suffix combines with the final, and regular but complex changes occur as a result.

The "r" final must be distinguished from the retroflex consonant written <ri> in pinyin and [ʐ] in IPA. "The star rode a donkey" in some rhotic English accents, and 我女兒入醫院/我女儿入医院 Wǒ nǚ'ér rù yīyuàn "My daughter entered the hospital" in standard Mandarin, both have a first r pronounced with a relatively lax tongue, whereas the second /r/ sounds involves an active retraction of the tongue and contact with the top of the mouth.

In other dialects of Mandarin, the rhotic consonant is sometimes replaced by another syllable, such as li, in words that indicate locations. For example, 這兒/这儿 zhèr "here" and 那兒/那儿 nàr "there" become 這裡/这里 zhèli and 那裡/那里 nàli, respectively.

The "ki-" sequence

Until a few centuries ago, some Mandarin Chinese words started with the sound sequence "ki-" or "gi-" (Wade-Giles "k'i-" and "ki-"). This changed in the last two or three centuries to "chi-" and "ji-", at varying times in different areas, and not in the dialect used in the Manchu dynasty imperial court. That is why some European transcriptions of Chinese names contain "ki-". Examples are Peking for Beijing, Nanking, Chungking, "-kiang" for "-jiang" (= "river"), Fukien for Fujian (a province).

Tones

Relative pitch changes of the four tones

Mandarin, like all Chinese dialects, is a tonal language. This means that tones, just like consonants and vowels, are used to distinguish words from each other. Many foreigners have difficulties mastering the tones of each character, but correct tonal pronunciation is essential for intelligibility because of the vast number of words in the language that only differ by tone (i.e. are minimal pairs with respect to tone). Statistically, tones are as important as vowels in Standard Mandarin. The following are the 4 tones of Standard Mandarin:

Tone chart of Standard Mandarin

Tone name	Yin Ping	Yang Ping	Shang	Qu
Tone number	1	2	3	4
Pinyin diacritic	ā	á	ǎ	à
Tone letter	˥ (55)	˧˥ (35)	˨˩, ˨˩˦ (21, 214)	˥˩ (51)
IPA diacritic	á	ǎ	à, a᷉	â

1. First tone, or high-level tone (陰平/阴平 yīnpíng, literal meaning: dark level):

   a steady high sound, as if it were being sung instead of spoken.

2. Second tone, or rising tone (陽平/阳平 yángpíng, literal meaning: light level), or linguistically, high-rising:

   is a sound that rises from mid-level tone to high (e.g., What?!)

3. Third tone, low or dipping tone (上 shǎng, literal meaning: "rising"):

   has a mid-low to low descent; if at the end of a sentence or before a pause, it is then followed by a rising pitch. Between other tones it may simply be low.

4. Fourth tone, falling tone, or high-falling (去 qù, literal meaning: "departing"):

   features a sharp fall from high to low, and is a shorter tone, similar to curt commands. (e.g., Stop!)

Neutral tone

Also called fifth tone or zeroth tone (in Chinese: 輕聲/轻声 qīng shēng, literal meaning: "light tone"), neutral tone is sometimes thought of as a lack of tone. It usually comes at the end of a word or phrase, and is pronounced in a light and short manner. The neutral tone has a large number of allophones: Its pitch depends almost entirely on the tone carried by the syllable preceding it. The situation is further complicated by the amount of dialectal variation associated with it; in some regions, notably Taiwan, the neutral tone is relatively uncommon.

Despite many examples of minimal pairs (for example, 要是 and 钥匙, yàoshì if and yàoshi key, respectively), it is sometimes described as something other than a full-fledged tone for technical reasons: Namely because some linguists feel that it results from a "spreading out" of the tone on the preceding syllable. This idea is appealing intuitively because without it, the neutral tone requires relatively complex tone sandhi rules to be made sense of; indeed, it would have to have 4 separate allotones, one for each of the four tones that could precede it. However, the "spreading" theory incompletely characterizes the neutral tone, especially in sequences where more than one neutrally toned syllable are found adjacent.

The following are from Beijing dialect. Other dialects may be slightly different.

Realization of neutral tones

Tone of first syllable	Pitch of neutral tone	Example	Pinyin	English meaning
1 ˥	˨ (2)	玻璃 (˥.˨)	bōli	glass
2 ˧˥	˧ (3)	伯伯 (˧˥.˧)	bóbo	uncle
3 ˨˩	˦ (4)	喇叭 (˨˩.˦)	lǎba	horn
4 ˥˩	˩ (1)	兔子 (˥˩.˩)	tùzi	rabbit

Most romanizations represent the tones as diacritics on the vowels (e.g., Hanyu Pinyin, MPS II and Tongyong Pinyin). Zhuyin uses diacritics as well. Others, like Wade-Giles, use superscript numbers at the end of each syllable. The tone marks and numbers are rarely used outside of language textbooks. Gwoyeu Romatzyh is a rare example where tones are not represented as special symbols, but using normal letters of the alphabet (although without a one-to-one correspondence).

To listen to the tones, see http://www.wku.edu/~shizhen.gao/Chinese101/pinyin/tones.htm (click on the blue-red yin yang symbol).

Tone sandhi

Pronunciation also varies with context according to the rules of tone sandhi. The most prominent phenomenon of this kind is when there are two third tones in immediate sequence, in which case the first of them changes to a rising tone, the second tone. In the literature, this contour is often called two-thirds tone or half-third tone, though generally, in Standard Mandarin, the "two-thirds tone" is the same as the second tone. If there are three third tones in series, the tone sandhi rules become more complex, and depend on word boundaries, stress, and dialectal variations.

Tone sandhi rules at a glance

1. When there are two 3rd tones (˨˩˦) in a row, the first syllable becomes 2nd tone (˧˥), and the second syllable becomes a half-3rd tone (˨˩). The half-3rd tone is a tone that only falls but does not rise.

   ex: 老鼠 (lǎoshǔ) becomes [lɑʊ̯˧˥ʂu˨˩]

2. When there are three 3rd tones in a row, things get more complicated.

   If the first word is two syllables, and the second word is one syllable, the first two syllables become 2nd tones, and the last syllable stays 3rd tone:

   ex: 保管好 (bǎoguǎn hǎo) becomes [pɑʊ̯˧˥ku̯an˧˥xɑʊ̯˨˩˦]

   If the first word is one syllable, and the second word is two syllables, the first syllable becomes half-3rd tone (˨˩), the second syllable becomes 2nd tone, and the last syllable stays 3rd tone:

   ex: 老保管 (lǎo bǎoguǎn) becomes [lɑʊ̯˨˩pɑʊ̯˧˥ku̯an˨˩˦]

3. When a 3rd tone is followed by a first, second or fourth tone, or most neutral tone syllables, it usually becomes a half-3rd tone.

   ex: 美妙 (měimiào) becomes [mei̯˨˩mi̯ɑʊ̯˥˩]

Rules for "一" and "不"

"一" (yī) and "不" (bù) have special rules which do not apply to other Chinese characters:

1. When in front of a 4th tone syllable, "一" becomes 2nd tone.

   ex: 一定 (yīdìng becomes yídìng [i˧˥tiŋ˥˩])

2. When in front of a non-4th tone syllable, "一" becomes 4th tone.

   ex. (1st tone)：一天 (yītiān → yìtiān [i˥˩tʰi̯ɛn˥])

   ex. (2nd tone): 一年 (yīnián → yìnián [i˥˩ni̯ɛn˧˥])

   ex. (3rd tone): 一起 (yīqǐ → yìqǐ [i˥˩t͡ɕʰi˨˩˦])

3. When "一" falls between two words, it becomes neutral tone.

   ex: 看一看 (kànyīkàn) becomes kànyikàn

4. When counting sequentially, and for all other situations "一" retains its root tone value of 1st tone. This includes when 一 is used at the end of a multi-syllable word (regardless of the first tone of the next word), and when 一 is immediately followed by any digit, including another 一; hence 一 also retains its root tone value of 1st tone in both syllables of the word "一一". However, it does not include situations where 一一 is part of a longer word like 一一对应 or 一一如命 (these are pronounced yìyíduìyìng and yíyìrúmìng, although written yīyīduìyìng and yīyīrúmìng). The word 不一一 (meaning "I won't go into details") is pronounced differently depending on whether or not speakers interpret it as containing 一一 as a component word.
5. When 一 is part of a cardinal number, it is pronounced as 4th tone when before 千 or 百, but in an ordinal number it is pronounced as 1st tone in these contexts.
6. "不" becomes 2nd tone only when followed by a 4th tone syllable.

   ex: 不是 (bùshì) becomes [pu˧˥ʂɻ̩˥˩]

7. When "不" comes between two words in a yes-no question, it loses its tone (becomes neutral in tone).

   ex: 是不是 (shìbùshì) becomes shìbushì

Relationship between Middle Chinese and modern tones

Relationship between Middle Chinese and modern tones:

V- = unvoiced initial consonant
L = sonorant initial consonant
V+ = voiced initial consonant (not sonorant)

Middle Chinese Tone

Ping (平)

Shang (上)

Qu (去)

Ru (入)

Middle Chinese Initial

V-

L

V+

V-

L

V+

V-

L

V+

V-

L

V+

Standard Mandarin Tone name

Yin Ping (陰平, 1)

Yang Ping (陽平, 2)

Shang (上, 3)

Qu (去, 4)

redistributed with no pattern

to Qu

to Yang Ping

Standard Mandarin Tone contour

55

35

214

51

to 51

to 35

It is known that if the two morphemes of a compound word cannot be ordered by grammar, the order of the two is usually determined by tones — Yin Ping (1), Yang Ping (2), Shang (3), Qu (4), and Ru, which is the plosive-ending tone that has already disappeared. Below are some compound words that show this rule. Tones are shown in parentheses, and R indicates Ru.

• 左右 (34)
• 南北 (2R)
• 輕重 (14)
• 貧富 (24)
• 凹凸 (1R)
• 喜怒 (34)
• 哀樂 (1R)
• 生死 (13)
• 死活 (3R)
• 陰陽 (12)
• 明暗 (24)
• 毀譽 (34)
• 褒貶 (13)
• 離合 (2R)

Word stress

The stress pattern of Chinese language is made up of three degrees of stress. There are three stress patterns, which commonly occur in the two-syllable compound words:

Pattern One: Normal Stress + Primary Stress (\ + /)

Pattern Two: Primary Stress + Unstressed (/ + o)

Pattern Three: Primary Stress + Normal Stress (/ + \)

Pattern One \ + /

• 字画儿 zìhuàr
• 音乐 yīnyuè
• 学校 xuéxiào
• 汽车 qìchē

Pattern Two / + o

• 父亲 fùqin
• 喜欢 xǐhuan
• 东西 dōngxi

Pattern Three / + \

• 农村 nóngcūn
• 社会 shèhuì
• 热情 rèqíng