3.5: Tones

Table of Tones

IPA + Tonal Values	Description	Singlor Pengim	Tone Change	Hanyu Pinyin	Teochew Peng’im	POJ/Tailo	Trad (HK)	Trad (TC)
a˧ (33/44)	Middle Flat	a¹	a¹	❌	a¹	a	阴平/1	阴平/1
a˧˥ (24)	Rising	á²	ǎ²⁷	á	a⁶	â	阳平/5	阳上/6
a˨˩ (21)	Low Falling	ǎ³	à³⁴	ǎ	a³	à	阴去/3	阴去/3
a˥˧ (42)	High Falling	à⁴	á⁴² a⁴¹ *ǎ⁴⁷	à	a²	á	阴上/2	阴上/2
a˥ (55)	High Flat	ā⁵	ǎ⁵⁷	ā	a⁵	ã*	❌	阳平/5
a˦ (43)	Falling/High Checked	à⁶, ā⁶	ǎ⁶⁸	❌	a⁸	a̍	阳入/8	阳入/8
a˨˩ (21)	Low Falling	ǎ⁷	ǎ⁷	❌	a⁷	ā	阳去/7	阳去/7
a˨ (2)	Low Checked	ǎ⁸	à⁸⁶, ā⁸⁶	❌	a⁴	a	阴入/4	阴入/4

What are Tonal Values?

These are Standard Chinese (Mandarin) tones mapped on a chart, with 1 indicating the lowest pitch, and 5 indicating the highest pitch. 3 represents the normal speaking pitch of a person.

From the chart above, we can derive that the tonal values for the four Standard Mandarin tones.

Tone 1 is flat, and has a tonal value of 55.

Tone 2 is rising, and has a tonal value of 35.

Tone 3 is falling-rising, and has a tonal value of 214.

Tone 4 is falling, and has a tonal value of 51.

Most Singaporeans who speak Mandarin actually realise Mandarin tones differently from the standard tones. These are Singaporean Mandarin tones mapped on the same chart.

Chen Chung-Yu, NUS

The tones of Singaporean Mandarin are generally "lower", and less ‘exaggerated" than that of Standard Chinese. 

The tones of Singapore Mandarin are as follows:

Tone 1 is flat, and has a tonal value of 44.

Tone 2 is rising, and has a tonal value of 24.

Tone 3 is low-falling, and has a tonal value of 21. (Generally just a very low tone)

Tone 4 is falling, and has a tonal value of 41.

Tone 5, is a falling, abrupt tone with a tonal value of 42 or 41. It is found inconsistently in Singaporean Mandarin, especially among older speakers. It is either identical to the 4th tone, or ends with a glottal stop (' in Singlor Pengim). This tone is known as 入声, the checked tone. 

Singaporean Mandarin tones are relevant as they are actually quite similar to the tones of Singaporean Hokkien and Teochew compared to that of Standard Mandarin. 

Thus, when learning the tones of Hokkien and Teochew, one can actually just use Singaporean Mandarin tones to replicate them.

Traditional Tone System

Hokkien has 7 tones, while Teochew has 8. This is because Hokkien merged one of its tones with another. Following the traditional system, Hokkien's Tone 6 merged with Tone 7. Tones also undergo tone change.

Traditionally, tones in Hokkien and Teochew are split into yin 阴 and yang 阳. Both the Yin and Yang tones would be split into another 4 tones, being the level tone 平, rising tone 上, departing tone 去, and entering (checked) tone 入.

This leaves us with the 8 combinations of Traditional Tones, with their tonal values:

	Number	Chinese	English	SG Hokkien	SG Teochew	SG Mandarin
阴	1	阴平	Yin-level	44 or 33	33	like Tone 1
	2	阴上	Yin-rising	42	42	like Tone 4
	3	阴去	Yin-departing	21	21 or 213	like Tone 3
	4	阴入	Yin-entering	short 2	short 2
阳	5	阳平	Yang-level	24	55	like Tone 2, High Tone 1
	6	阳上	Yang-rising	NA	24	like Tone 2
	7	阳去	Yang-departing	21 or 22	21 or 22	like Tone 3
	8	阳入	Yang-entering	short 43 or 4	short 43 or 4

Note that entering tones, otherwise known as checked tones, 入声, are short and abrupt. They occur in words ending in -p, -t, -k, and -'. (POJ/PUJ -p, -t, -k, -h)

Here are the 8 tones following the traditional system Singaporean Hokkien and Teochew, in POJ/PUJ:

All Chinese characters fall in these 8 catagories of tones, which are shared between Hokkien and Teochew. Characters are pronounced with different tonal values between Hokkien and Teochew for Tone 5 and Tone 6.

For instance, the character 侬, "person", is a Tone 5 word. Thus, its pronunciation in Hokkien would be lang24 (POJ lâng), and its pronunciation in Teochew would be nang55 (PUJ nâng). This is why all rising tone words in Hokkien are a high flat tone in Teochew.

Another example, the character 有, "to have", is a Tone 6 word. Since Hokkien merges Tone 6 and 7, it is pronounced as u21 or u22 (POJ ū) in Hokkien. Its pronunciation in Teochew is u24 (PUJ ũ). This is why certain low tone words in Hokkien are a rising tone in Teochew.

POJ and PUJ use the traditional system with diacritics in its romanisation system.

Guangdong Pengim uses the traditional system with tone numbers in its romanisation system.

Singlor Pengim Tone System

Singlor Pengim directly focuses on the realisation of the tonal value, and assigns a tone number to it.

The system aims to prevent confusion when Hokkien and Teochew realise the same traditional tone with different tonal values. 

Here are the 8 Tones of Singlor Pengim, and their tonal values:

Number	Desription	SG Hokkien	SG Teochew	SG Mandarin
1	Middle Flat	44 or 33	33	like Tone 1
2	Rising	24	24	like Tone 2
3	Low	21	21 or 213	like Tone 3
4	Falling	42	42	like Tone 4
5	High Flat	24	55	like High Tone 1
6	Falling/High Checked	short 43 or 4	short 43 or 4
7	Low	21 or 22	21 or 22	like Tone 3
8	Low Checked	short 2	short 2

Note that despite Tones 3 and 7 having almost identical tonal values, Tone 3 undergoes tone change while Tone 7 does not. That is why they are separated.

The tone of the word will be indicated by adding the tone number behind it.

Singlor Pengim can also use diacritics to aid in quick tonal identification. It will use the same 4 diacritic markers Mandarin uses. The markers are not pegged to one tone only, and will change to reflect the exact tonal value in tone change. We encourage using diacritics along together with tone numbers.

Diacritic Marker	Description	For Tones	For Tone Change
a	Middle Flat	1	1, 4
ā	High Flat, High Checked	5, 6	8
á	Rising	2	4
ǎ	Low, Low Checked	3, 7, 8	2, 5, 6, 7
à	Falling, Falling Checked	4, 6	3, 8

Tone 2 is rising and would thus apply to a word like 侬, “person”, a pronounced with rising tone in Hokkien. It is written as láng² for Hokkien in Singlor Pengim.

However, 侬, “person”, in Teochew is pronounced with a high flat tone. Thus the high flat Tone 5 is applied to it. It is written as nāng⁵ for Teochew in Singlor Pengim.

The rising Tone 2 would apply to a word like 有, “to have”, in Teochew, as this word is pronounced with a rising tone. It is written as ú² for Teochew in Singlor Pengim.

However, 有, “to have”, in Hokkien is pronounced with a low tone. Thus, the low Tone 7 is applied to it. It is written as ǔ⁷ for Hokkien in Singlor Pengim. (It is not Tone 3 because it does not undergo tone change)

Thus, unlike the traditional system, the same tone may not be used for the same character for Hokkien and Teochew. If characters are pronounced differently between Hokkien and Teochew, Singlor Pengim will show the differences between them through its tone system.

Tone Correspondences

If you encounter a character, and know its tone in Mandarin, you can use that knowedge to infer the tone of the character in Hokkien and Teochew!

Note that this may not work all of the time, but it's fairly reliable... 😅

Mandarin Tone	Hokkien Tone	Teochew Tone	Example
1	1	1	山, 车, 龟
2	2	5	头, 牛, 鱼
3	4	4	水, 九, 手
4	3, 7	3, 2, 7	去, 会, 大
any	6, 8	6, 8	入, 目, 力

Continue on to Tone Change for a more detailed explanation of Singlor Pengim's 8 tones!

~桂壱 🤨