Hey all,

Im jumping the gun a bit here as i think i will come across this myself at some stage. But i am curious, how do you know the tone of a character without having learned the corresponding pinyin?

Obviously the tones are there somewhere in each character, but how do you determine it?

For example - 四 si, which i know is 3rd tone, si3, how do you tell this from the character? I only know it's si3 from learning it that way.

Does anyone know how this works?

cheers
Marcus

You really do have to learn the tone for each character.

Characters don't really have anything in them that indicates tone, that's just something you have to learn separately.

Some characters change tone depending on meaning and usage like 要, 假 etc. Some local accents use different tones for certain words than in standard putonghua.

Speaking and listening to the word many times is the only real way to learn tones; when you are familiar enough with a word you can recall the tone simply by saying the word to yourself and it will just feel right in the correct tone. At this point you will not need to think about the tone in your normal speech.

That takes a lot of usage to develop though, so generally when you first learn tones you are just doing simple memorization. Skritter is perfect for this!

By the way, 四 is fourth tone, sì. Third tone, sǐ, means 死, to die.

There is nothing that can indicate tone in characters.
More, depending on different words, where same character is used later, not just tone, but all sound will change.
Example:便 - it will be shown in Skritter as 4th tone, and it's really so.
But now this: 便宜 - pianyi, where Bian falling tone, became Pian with rising tone.
That means "cheap", and buy the way, very much used word. Say the tone LITTLE bit wrong, and you will be never understood (at least in Taiwan).
More, the tones in several places can vary. 夕 - it's xi1, as written in MDGB for example.
However, in Taiwan, where I tried to use it, I had been told it's xi4. (if someone will now in skritter there is a note (4th tone in Taiwan - this is after my PM's with Nick.
Note by the way scrupulous support of our skritter gods - even such a thing was, noticed and noted! Which service you know with such support?

- By the way, 四 is fourth tone, sì. Third tone, sǐ, means 死, to die.

That's also answer why hospitals in Taiwan (how about China?) have no 4th floors. After 3 comes 5th.

No character definitely tells you the tone, but some do give you hints. The vast majority of characters are 形声, phonetic compounds, that have one part which shows the meaning and one which gives a clue to the sound

For example:

The character for dragon - 龙 long2

is also used in deaf - 聋 long2 - with the ear element showing the meaning and the 龙 element giving the sound.

But the sound element is not always accurate, it is more of a rough guide. So even though 聋's pronunciation is exactly the same as 龙, another character with the dragon element - 陇 - is pronounced long3.

And sometimes they can be way off. The character to sink 沉 has the 3 drops of water on the left to show the meaning is connected with water, and then the character used on the right - 冗 - is pronounced rong3, which would make you think that 沉's pronunciation would be similar. Actually it is pronounced chen2. So sometimes the phonetic hints give no hint at all.

So pretty much you have to learn the tone and pronunciation for each one individually - but thats the fun of Chinese.

- That's also answer why hospitals in Taiwan (how about China?) have no 4th floors. After 3 comes 5th.

It's not uncommon. My （recently built) apartment in Beijing has four rooms per floor, xx01, xx02, xx03, xx05. Lots of buildings don't have a 4th or 13th floor.

Man how do you guys know all this stuff? Haha I swear to god, half the battle of trying to learn this language is focusing on the here and now and not the whole picture.

Thanks a lot for the information though, I appreciate it.

A secondary question - in answering my question, by providing examples, what method are you actually using to type the tone into your reply?

cheers
Marcus

@Marcus: you can find bunch of useful pinyin tone marks web sites here: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=type+pinyin+tone+marks ; you should be able to type them directly but depending on what OS you're running it might be somewhat inconvenient.

As for memorizing tones, I find it helps to actually say the word out loud several times when you run into it, emphasizing the tone. When Skritter prompts you for the tone, actually say it aloud, using the tone you *think* it has. If you're wrong, repeat it with the correct tone a couple of times.

Of course, if you're somewhere where people can hear you, they will think you're insane.

James

Understanding how important tones are also helps a lot.
I am not sure, how it was with other Skritterers, who went through evolution process of speaking chinese, my way was something like this:
- Tones? I still can remember wei, "they" will understand me, make a reservation that I am foreigner.
- They don't understand me (annoying feeling in stomach), still I resist accept that, but start to think about this.
- They continue the do not understand what I say, even for such an easy cases as 綠茶, so, I am starting to repeat and learn tones seriously. Still I am somewhat angry on a situation when rising tone sounds totally same as rising-falling. Most important here is that even if you ask someone to say it again, and your inside "you" resist you hear the difference, and you shoot out - for me they sound similar!!!!, still accept that it's YOUR problem to finally set yourself down to start take the tones seriously.
- Final stage. You eagerly grab the tones, and in short time, you not just here the differences, they become natural.
That's a great feeling that can't be compared to anything else.

sorry for mistakes above, as usually everyone is in hurry :(