Chinese languages have different variations in pronunciation due to the use of tones, which determine the meaning of a word. Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world and has four tones. Chinese languages are monosyllabic, and assigning tones to each syllable creates distinct words. Unlike other languages, Chinese characters represent single syllables, and a single expression can be written using distinct characters. Taiwanese and Cantonese have more tones than Mandarin.
Many Westerners believe that Chinese refers to a single language and that the variations in pronunciation equate to the dialectical differences found between English speakers living in southern states and those living in northern states. Indeed, although the dozens of Chinese variants all use the same set of lexical items and grammatical structures, a speaker of one area may be completely unable to communicate orally with a speaker of another. This is not because each considers the other’s accent too often, but because all Chinese words are composed not only of phonemes, or sound units, but also carry their meaning through tones, or the tone in which a word is pronounced . Transcribers use a tone number and tone name for a sentence spoken using one of several Western transcription methods.
With over 845 million speakers, Mandarin is by far the most widely used language in the world. Mandarin, like all Chinese languages, often called Chinese dialects, incorporates tones that determine the meaning of a word. Tone number one is called yin ping, and it’s a smooth sound that neither rises nor falls. Tone number two, yang ping, dips slightly in the middle of the word and then returns to its original tone. Shang is the third tone, and it also falls, but more dramatically than yang ping, and the fourth and final tone in Mandarin, qu, starts at a high point and plummets.
Mandarin and other Chinese languages are monosyllabic; since all languages limit the number of phonemes, incorporating tone into every Chinese word is a necessity, otherwise there would not be enough phonemic combinations to suffice. English, like other polysyllabic languages, is non-tonal for the simple reason that it isn’t necessary. Using just 40 phonemes, the English lexicon contains well over 250,000 words; this is possible because English allows for more syllables, and new words combine roots with affixes and rearrange sounds.
In Mandarin, a single syllable is a word, and by assigning that syllable four tones in which it can be used, one syllable effectively becomes four distinct words. This may be complex enough to amaze many Westerners, but Taiwanese, another Chinese language, adds four additional tone numbers for a total of eight, and Cantonese incorporates nine distinct tones.
It is important to note that unlike many other languages, all Chinese languages or dialects are not based on the alphabet in their written forms. One character represents one word, and each word is a single syllable. This means that a Mandarin expression that can be spoken in tone number one, tone number two, and tone number four will be written using three distinct, unrelated characters. In this way, a Cantonese speaker and a Taiwanese speaker can read the same text and fully understand it, but will pronounce it very differently.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
