Tone Sandhis pronounced differently?

[ipsi()]

As far as I'm aware, when the various tone Sandhis occur, they're pronounced as if they were the new tones. That doesn't make much sense, so:

你好 is prounced exactly as 尼好 (even if 尼好 makes no sense, the pronunciation is good).

And 不做 is pronounced as 醭做, and 一下 is prounced as 宜下. Again, ignore the fact that these examples probably make no sense.

Now, that's what I understand to be the case, but I'm curious if anyones noticed if any pronounciation differences? Looking at a graph in books showing the tones, and given that they say the second tone sandhi is just the falling part of the third tone, I would think that there should be some (extremely) minor difference in pronunciation.

So, am I off my rocker here or what?

[HashiriKata]

There should be no phonetic difference between the sandhi'ed and the permanent ones.

Of course there are always some who want to say otherwise (but trust me, I'm the one to trust! ).

[againstwind]

hi,ipsi()

The Chinese tone sandhis is complicated, indeed.I wonder if you know “五度表音法”？That's the first tone is 55,second is 35, third is 214 and the forth is 51.

Anyway, i'll try to explain it.

In fact, tone sandhis mainly occurs on the third tone characters . There are 3 situations.

1. two third tone characters are together:

1.1 the former one becomes the second tone ,which is 35.

e.g.

你好 水果 了解 （214+214）→（35+214）

1.2 if the latter one is no-tone （轻声）but originally the third tone too, the former one become the second tone (35) or half third tone (21)

e.g.

等等 想起 (214+neutral tone) → (35+neutral tone)

姐姐 奶奶 (214+neutral tone) → (21+neutral tone)

2. three third tone characters are together, two situations,which are related to the arrangement of the words :

2.1 很勇敢 小老虎 （214+214+214）→ （21+35+214）

you see, 勇敢 and 老虎 are headwords.

2.2 展览馆 管理组 (214+214+214) → (35+35+214)

you see, 展览 and 管理 are attributes

3. before non-third tone characters, the third tone should become 21.

e.g.

首都 北京 (214+55) → (21+55)

海洋 语言 (214+35) → (21+35)

土地 鼓励 (214+51) → (21+51)

尾巴 宝贝 (214+neutral tone) → (21+neutral tone)

Difficult? It doesn't matter. If you have chance to speak chinese with native speakers, i think you will grasp the Chinese tone sandhis sooner or later.

[Altair]

Can anyone confirm that he or she pronounces 起码 and 骑马 differently, as is described below in the Standard Mandarin article in Wikipedia?

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. This tone contour is sometimes described incorrectly as being equivalent to second tone; while the two are very similar, many native speakers can distinguish them (compare 起码 and 骑马, pinyin qĭ mă and qí mă respectively). In the literature, this contour is often called two-thirds tone or half-third 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.

[Mugi]

小老虎 （214+214+214）→ （21+35+214）

Isn't this example more commonly: 214 + 214 + neutral tone (4) → 21 + 35 + neutral tone (4) ?