Where we start
The running case for all six sessions is Lumen Logistics, an invented Singapore freight company opening a partnership with a Shanghai distributor. You are the person they are sending. By session 6 you will run a first meeting in Chinese and follow it up on WeChat. Tonight is the part every later session stands on: the sounds, and above all the tones, because a tone error in business Chinese is not an accent, it is a different word.
★ What you walk out with tonight. Your name and your company written in pinyin with correct tone marks, twelve business words you can say on the right pitch shape, the four tone shapes drawn from memory, and the one rule that explains why 你好 (nǐ hǎo, hello) is said ní hǎo.
One syllable, three parts
5 min liveEvery Mandarin syllable is built the same way: an optional opening consonant, called the initial, then the rest of the syllable, called the final, and over the whole thing a tone. 买 (mǎi, buy) is the initial m, the final ai, and the third tone. Pinyin writes the first two as letters and the tone as a mark over a vowel.
LiveInitials, finals, and what pinyin is for3 min▶
An initial is the consonant a syllable may start with: the m of 买 (mǎi, buy), the g of 公司 (gōngsī, company), the j of 经理 (jīnglǐ, manager). Some syllables have none: 安 (ān, safe). A final is everything after it: ai, ong, ing. Mandarin has a small, closed set of each, and only certain combinations exist, which is why there are only a few hundred distinct syllables before tones are added.
Pinyin is the official romanisation of Mandarin, used in mainland China, in Singapore schools and on every phone keyboard. It is a pronunciation guide, not English spelling: pinyin q is close to the ch in "cheese", x is close to the sh in "she", and zh, ch, sh are said with the tongue curled further back. You will type Chinese by typing pinyin, so learning it properly pays twice.
The tone is written as a mark over a vowel: ā á ǎ à for tones one to four, and no mark for the neutral tone. The national pinyin rules (GB/T 16159-2012) put the mark on the syllable's main vowel, and on the second letter of the finals iu and ui. A teaching shortcut gives the same answer on every pinyin final: a or e if either is present, the o of ou, otherwise the last vowel. So it is mǎi, not maǐ, and guì (贵 (guì, expensive), expensive), not gùi.
Self-studyThe sounds an English speaker gets wrong first3 min▶
Four pinyin letters do not mean what an English reader expects. q is a soft "ch" with the tongue flat behind the lower teeth: 钱 (qián, money). x is a soft "sh" in the same position: 谢谢 (xièxie, thank you). c is "ts" as in "cats": 菜 (cài, dish). z is "dz" as in "adds": 在 (zài, at, be in).
The vowel ü is the French u or German ü, lips rounded while saying "ee". After j, q, x and y it is written as a plain u, so 去 (qù, go) has the ü sound even though no dots appear. These four letters and that one vowel cover most of the first-week confusion; the build-along has you say each one in a business word.
The name on the card. A constructed case. Lumen Logistics prints its Shanghai cards with the English name on one side and a Chinese name on the other, with pinyin underneath so partners can say it. The first proof read "Lu Men Wu Liu" with no tone marks, and the Shanghai side read it four different ways in the first week. The second proof had 鲁门物流 (Lǔmén Wùliú, Lumen Logistics) with marks, and nobody had to ask again.
Four shapes and a light one
6 min liveA tone is not a note. It is a shape your pitch traces across the syllable, measured against your own voice. Linguists describe it on a five-step scale from 1 (the bottom of your comfortable range) to 5 (the top), a convention introduced by Yuen Ren Chao in 1930. On that scale the four tones are 55, 35, 214 and 51, and a fifth, the neutral tone, is short and light with no shape of its own.
LivePairs that change a business sentence3 min▶
Tones are not decoration. These pairs come up in the first week of any business conversation, and each differs only in tone:
| Say this | Means | Say this instead, by mistake | Means |
|---|---|---|---|
| 买 (mǎi, buy) (mǎi, buy) | buy | 卖 (mài, sell) (mài, sell) | sell |
| 十 (shí, ten) (shí, ten) | ten | 四 (sì, four) (sì, four) | four, and a different initial too |
| 是 (shì, to be, yes) (shì, to be, yes) | yes, it is | 十 (shí, ten) (shí, ten) | ten |
| 请 (qǐng, please, invite) (qǐng, please, invite) | please | 轻 (qīng, light in weight) (qīng, light in weight) | light |
In a negotiation, 买 (mǎi, buy) and 卖 (mài, sell) are the pair to drill until the third tone dips and the fourth falls without thinking. 十 (shí, ten) against 四 (sì, four) matters every time a quantity or a price is said aloud; the initials differ as well as the tones, and both have to be right.
Self-studyThe neutral tone, and when the third tone stops dipping3 min▶
The neutral tone is short and unstressed, with its pitch set by the tone before it. It sits on many second syllables of common words and on particles: the second 谢 (xiè, thank) of 谢谢 (xièxie, thank you), the 子 (zi, noun suffix) of 桌子 (zhuōzi, table), and the question particle 吗 (ma). Pinyin writes it with no mark.
The full dipping third tone, 214, is the citation form: how it sounds said alone or at the end of a phrase. Before any other tone, speakers drop the rise and say only the low part, the half third tone. 很好 (hěn hǎo, very good) starts low on 很 (hěn, very). This is the most common single thing that separates a fluent rhythm from a careful one, and session 3's trainer scores the half third as a third.
The buyer who offered to sell. A constructed case, and a very common one. On her first call with the Shanghai distributor, Lumen's operations lead meant to say 我们想买 (wǒmen xiǎng mǎi, we want to buy) and let the last word fall instead of dip. The other side heard 卖 (mài, sell) and spent two minutes politely explaining that they were not looking to buy freight capacity. Nobody laughed; it simply cost the call its first five minutes.
Why 你好 (nǐ hǎo, hello) is said ní hǎo
4 min liveDictionaries list each character with its own tone. In speech, three rules change a tone depending on the one after it. Native speakers apply them automatically; a learner who says every character at its dictionary tone sounds careful but slightly wrong, and a scorer that checks dictionary tones marks a correct speaker as making mistakes. Session 3 measures exactly that.
LiveThe three rules, said out loud2 min▶
Two third tones in a row: the first becomes a second tone. 你好 (nǐ hǎo, hello) is said ní hǎo; 老板 (lǎobǎn, boss) is said láobǎn. 不 (bù, not) before a fourth tone becomes bú: 不是 (bú shì, is not), 不要 (bú yào, do not want). 一 (yī, one) before a fourth tone becomes yí, as in 一定 (yídìng, certainly), and before tones one to three it becomes yì, as in 一起 (yìqǐ, together). When 一 (yī, one) is counted or used as a number in a series, as in 第一 (dì yī, first) or a phone number, it stays yī.
The national pinyin rules (GB/T 16159-2012) write 一 (yī, one) and 不 (bù, not) with their original tones and allow the changed tone to be written in teaching. These pages write the changed tone in word lists so you can see it; in a document or on a sign you will see the original. Either way the mouth makes the change, and session 3's trainer checks the changed tone, because that is what a Shanghai listener expects to hear.
Your name, your company, twelve words, on the right pitch
★ 22 min · everyone says itFive steps. The first three are on paper; the last two are out loud, with the trainer below listening. The trainer tracks your pitch in this page and scores the shape of each syllable against your own voice, so a deep voice and a high voice are scored the same way. Nothing you record leaves the browser.
Write your name and your company in pinyin. If you have a Chinese name, write it; if not, use the one on Lumen's card below as a model. Split each syllable into initial and final before adding anything else.
Place every tone mark by the rule. a or e takes the mark if present; the o of ou takes it; otherwise the last vowel. Do your twelve words, then check against the list.
Mark the tone changes. For each word, write the tones you will actually say. Four of the twelve change: find them before step 5 tells you.
Calibrate, then say the words. Use the trainer below. Press calibrate and say mā má mǎ mà once, with a small gap between syllables. Then choose a word, press record, and say it once at normal speed. If you have no microphone, the synthetic voice button runs the same scoring on a hum that follows the right shapes.
Read your result as a shape, not a grade. "Aimed for tone 3, heard tone 2" on the first syllable of 你好 (nǐ hǎo, hello) is correct: that is the tone change. A miss on 买 (mǎi, buy) heard as tone 4 is the one to drill, because it says 卖 (mài, sell).
Exaggerate for a week. Learners under-shape tones, especially the dip of the third and the full fall of the fourth. Overdoing them for the first week costs nothing; native listeners hear an exaggerated tone as clear, and a flattened one as a different word.
Before session 2
30 min- Say the twelve words to the trainer once a day for three days, calibrating each time. Write down the score each day; it is your own baseline, not a mark.
- Drill one pair. 买 (mǎi, buy) and 卖 (mài, sell), ten times each, alternating, until the dip and the fall feel different in your throat.
- Type five words with a pinyin keyboard on your phone: 开会 (kāihuì, have a meeting), 经理 (jīnglǐ, manager), 公司 (gōngsī, company), 合同 (hétong, contract), 价格 (jiàgé, price). Typing is how you will write every message from session 5 on.
- Find your name. If you do not have a Chinese name, write down three you would be comfortable with and bring them; session 2 is about names, titles and business cards.
Three questions
Clear all three and session 1 gets stamped in your passport.
1 · 买 (mǎi, buy) and 卖 (mài, sell) have the same initial and final. What tells them apart?
Mandarin uses pitch shape to tell words apart. Context helps a listener recover from many errors, but buy and sell appear in the same contexts, which is exactly why the pair is drilled first.
2 · Where does the tone mark go in the syllable guai?
The standard says the mark sits on the main vowel, and in guai that is the a. The shortcut "a or e first, the o of ou, otherwise the last vowel" gives the same answer and is easier to remember. Pinyin keyboards apply it for you.
3 · A dictionary lists 你 (nǐ, you) and 好 (hǎo, good) both as third tones. Why do native speakers say ní hǎo?
It is a rule, not an exception: 老板 (lǎobǎn, boss) and 很好 (hěn hǎo, very good) said in a phrase follow the same pattern. A tone checker that scores dictionary tones would mark a correct speaker wrong here; session 3 counts how often.
What this session teaches, and where it came from
Every fact on this page, and its verification tier, is recorded in the course's source map.
Session 1 cheat sheet · pin this
You can say twelve words. Session 2 puts them to work in the first two minutes of any meeting: how to address people by title, 王总 (Wáng zǒng, President Wang) and 李经理 (Lǐ jīnglǐ, Manager Li); how to introduce yourself and Lumen; and how a business card is given and received.