tones turning neutral

[realmayo]

As we know ... plenty of words formed by duplicating characters -- such as 妹妹 and 爸爸 -- have the second character spoken with a neutral (or 5th) tone, ie mei4mei5, ba4ba5. Fair enough.

However, dictionaries and the HSK also say certain other two-character words should behave the same, ie that 时候 should be shi2hou5 and 小姐 should be xiao3jie5.

Is there a "rule" or trend (similar to the duplication one) to explain these instances?

Is getting these right particularly important? Is it more important for some words than others? Is it just "northern" putonghua? or "exam" putonghua? Should I "fail" myself on flashcard tests if I forget to turn the second character neutral???

more examples: 前边, 哪里, 喜欢, 过来....

I did a search & was surprised not to find anything here about this, may well have missed something though.

[renzhe]

I've been told that pronouncing all tones is never wrong, and the frequency of the neutral tone depends on the dialect -- e.g. lots of neutral tones in northern dialects, very few in Taiwan.

The worst that can happen is that you may sound a bit off, or less casual. It's basically a relaxation of the second tone in spoken language.

I personally wouldn't consider it a reason to fail yourself on flashcards, and would rely on listening/talking experience to get a feel for where the neutral tones go. In all the examples you gave, pronouncing the full tone is not wrong, at least to the best of my knowledge.

[roddy]

Certainly in some contexts it would be considered wrong - the 普通话测试 for example has a list of 'must be read as neutral tone' words - see here. Both 喜欢 and 时候 are listed.

But in real life the worst that'll happen is you get told you have a certain accent, or that you cause a moment of confusion for the listener. I'd just choose a standard (your textbook, your tutor, your dictionary, whatever) and stick to it.

[imron]

It's very much considered wrong on things like the 普通话测试.

And on the mainland at least, I would say that it would be considered wrong to pronounce the tones of words that should have neutral tone, e.g. 东西 dōngxī instead of dōngxi.

The 普通话测试 provides a list of words containing neutral tones, which can be found here, with recordings found here.

[renzhe]

And on the mainland at least, I would say that it would be considered wrong to pronounce the tones of words that should have neutral tone, e.g. 东西 dōngxī instead of dōngxi.

You're right, come to think of it, I'd find dōngxī extremely weird. Any use of the zi suffix without a neutral tone would also sound very wrong.

On the other hand, xǐhuān doesn't sound weird to my ears, and neither does shíhòu. But you guys obviously have far more experience on this. Does the neutral tone here simply ends up sounding similar to the "real" tone because of the preceding one?

[roddy]

Off the top of my head, I can imagine 喜欢 being pronounced with full tones in isolation / for emphasis (do you like it? - LIKE!). But that's just me, and frankly I wouldn't trust myself.

东西 I can't even come up with a scenario for without changing the meaning - 东西关系 is never going to be about relationships between stuff.

[renzhe]

That's exactly the example I had in mind. "喜欢! 喜欢!"

[realmayo]

Guys, thanks a lot for your replies. Most of the Chinese people I know are 'southerners' ... it seems they pronounce a lot more tones than the northerners (and everyone says the southerners are lazy for not bothering with "sh" "zh" and "ch"! )

Those lists Imron and Roddy provided are very useful -- according to the lists, there are 545 words which should have a neutral last character. Seemed like rather a lot, but, according to a quick spreadsheet, 202 of them end in 子, so those hardly have to be "learned" as neutral.

Of the rest (in case anyone's interested): 22 end in 头, 8 气, 7 们 and 5 巴 (and a couple of others crop up more than once). Also, 19 are formed by duplication.

So ... assuming I haven't messed up the spreadsheet ... take out the 子头气们巴 and the duplicated ones, and there's only 282 to keep track of, which isn't too daunting after all.

[A life of study]

There is no rule to predict neutral tone. You just have to learn it with the vocab just as you learn all other tones.

But I will say this: you said xiao3jie, but some third tones get altered to 2nd before a neutral tone that is a weakened third tone, and some don't. Older sister, jiejie: this is read jie3jie, but xiaojie is read xiao2jie. And no the dictionaries don't mark this. You just have to notice.

As you said the zi suffix is always neutral tone. But you need to be aware of times when it is not a suffix. mu zi - mother and son. This is not a suffix. Mu3 zi3.

There is no neutral tone in classical Chinese or erhua either. If your passage to read in the HSK oral contains a quote from Confucius, you can't assign neutral tone or erhua to any of the characters.

Knowledge of which words have neutral tone in official putonghua is patchy among the southern population, and probably elsewhere too. Note: some words have optional neutral tone, eg hui4qi4 or hui4qi for "bad luck". This is indicated in the Contemporary Chinese dictionary by a raised dot before a 4th tone. Also Wenlin has some examples of words where use or not of neutral tone distinguishes meanings. I can't recall which words, but you will come across them from time to time, and I doubt that many Chinese people will recognise such faux distinctions.

[realmayo]

But I will say this: you said xiao3jie, but some third tones get altered to 2nd before a neutral tone that is a weakened third tone

ha! interesting. because: a couple of days ago when I read out loud to myself this word -- with the second character neutral -- I thought, aha, yes this does actually sound much more like how I've heard it spoken normally ... it was a kind of mini eureka moment where I decided I should start paying attention to the neutral tones like this.

without thinking about it, I'd naturally said xiao2jie ... & in fact, trying to say xiao3jie sounds so wrong!

Which I suppose reenforces what you say, for some of these, you just have to notice how things sound.

Knowledge of which words have neutral tone in official putonghua is patchy among the southern population, and probably elsewhere too.

I suppose it's reasonable to conclude that the more common use of neutral tones was a feature of the northern Chinese on which putonghua was based?

[Luobot]

This is a very confusing topic to me, also. Different speakers from various podcasts and other audio sources regularly pronounce certain words with its full tone and without it. Here is an example of 时候 where it is pronounced as shi2hou4 (full 4th tone); however, its pinyin spelling is shi2hou5.

Shi2hou pronounced as Shi2hou4

I have saved sound clips of shen2nme5 shi2hou5 (neutral) and shen2nme5 shi2hou4 (full 4th tone) from different speakers where the contrast is stark. I listen to them every once in a while just to further baffle myself about how I should sound.

Edited September 2, 2008 at 04:03 AM by Luobot
typo

[A life of study]

What's confusing about it? China has plenty of people who don't speak standard putonghua. In fact finding a speaker of 100% copperbottomed putonghua would be a challenge. So you have to get used to some divergence from the official standard.

[Luobot]

Get used to which one, did you say?

Actually, I agree that it's good to have an ear for different pronunciations, since they're a reality. But it's good to have a point of reference when it comes time for you to speak. Native speakers grow up with a point of reference. A language learner using various online resources may not.

[atitarev]

I noticed that certain things are neutral or prescribed to be neutral even in the standard Taiwanese Mandarin (国语), such as endings 子 and 儿 (used less often in Taiwan but still used, especially in formal or standard speech), particles 了 and 吧, and many syllable duplications (e.g. 爷爷). Not meaning to duplicate what others have said but to highlight things where you won't go wrong.

In Zhuyin Fuhao (注音符号), the neutral tone is marked with a dot above (e.g. 爷爷 = ㄧㄝˊㄧㄝ˙ = yéye). The first tone has no tone marks, which may be confusing for Pinyin users .

I mentioned this in Characters with different pronunciations on Mainland / Taiwan

[realmayo]

A quick specific related question:

晚上 -- if you're going to pronounce 上 neutral, then for 晚上, would you go wan2shang or wan3shang?

not a big deal, just bugging me.

[imron]

It should be wǎnshang. Words such as 小姐 only switch to second tone because if the last character wasn't neutral it would be 2 third tones e.g. xiǎojiě, which due to tone sandhi would mean that that xiáo would be be pronounced as second tone. This is not the case with 晚上, which without the neutral tone would be wǎnshàng, and so no tone sandhi is applied.

[realmayo]

Huh -- still puzzled, this time about why I even asked that question, because I knew the answer (thanks for your reply though Imron ), my brain must've turned off half way through. What had been bugging me, saying 晚上 again and again, was whether the wan3 is a more "pronounced" third tone -- goes down futher, I suppose -- when the 上 is neutral, versus when it's fourth tone? Or is that just a feature of not having to gear up for a decent fourth tone immediately afterwards (and therefore having more time on the 晚). Sorry if this seems trivial or very fernickety, but it's been playing on my mind, how different some words suddenly sound to me when the second character is neutralised.

[Don_Horhe]

Sorry to bring this old topic back up, but I have a question that's been bugging me for some time - is 哪里 pronounced na3li or na2li? I've always said na3li, but I hear people around me saying na2li. It's even na2li in nciku.

[renzhe]

I pronounce it as a second tone, for the same reasons mentioned by imron a couple of posts back.