The tone contours of Standard Mandarin

Tone contours are numbers that represent the way pitch varies over a syllable. Their invention is attributed Yuen Ren Chao. If you visualise a stave of music, there are five horizontal lines. Each representing a different pitch level. The pitch levels are numbered from 1 to 5, the lowest being 1 and the highest being 5. Download high resolution version (436x700, 51 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (436x700, 51 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... This article or section uses Ruby annotation. ... This article discusses the unit of speech. ... Yuen Ren Chao (趙元任 Pinyin: Zhào Yuánrèn; WG: Chao Yüan-jen; Gwoyeu Romatzyh: Jaw Yuanren) (November 3, 1892 - February 25, 1982) was a Chinese phonologist and dialectologist who shaped Gwoyeu Romatzyh. ...

The Standard Mandarin third tone has a tone contour /214/, showing a pitch that dips and then rises. Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language used by the Peoples Republic of China, the Republic of China on Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. ...

Examples of level tone contours are /11/, /22/, /33/, /44/ and /55/.

Falling tone contours include /51/, /31/, /53/, etc.

Rising tone contours include /13/, /35/, /15/, etc.

Short tones only show one digit. For example, a high-pitched short utterance would have a tone contour of /5/, whereas a long, level high tone would be /55/. These "abrupt tones" typically have either an unvoiced consonant or a glottal stop at the end which abruptly cuts off the vowel sound.