Tone sandhi (Sandhi is from Sanskrit meaning, "putting together") refers to the pitch change in tones when different tones come together. For example, in Mandarin Chinese the most common tone sandhi rule is that a low-tone syllable (third tone) is changed to a rising tone (second tone) when it is followed by another low tone. This is demonstrated in the phrase nǐhǎo (pinyin, Chinese characters 你好), the most common Mandarin greeting, which is actually pronounced níhǎo. These tone-changing processes are active in all tonal languages, but they seem to be more common in some than in others. Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... This article is on all of the Northern Chinese dialects. ... Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ), commonly called Pinyin, is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... Japanese name Kanji: Kana: Korean name Hangul: Hanja: Vietnamese name Vietnamese: Hantu: A Chinese character (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) is a logogram used in writing Chinese, Japanese, sometimes Korean, and formerly Vietnamese. ...

While certain languages (such as Mandarin in the above example) exhibit a fairly constant set of rules for Tone Sandhi, other forms, such as Hakka, are more complex. Southern Min is still more complex, with the most complex systems found in Wu and Jin. Hakka (Simplified Chinese: 客家话, Traditional Chinese: 客家話, Pronunciation in Hakka: Hak-ka-fa/-va, Pinyin: Kèjiāhuà) is a spoken variation of the Chinese language spoken predominantly in southern China by the Hakka ethnic group and descendants in diaspora throughout East and Southeast Asia and around the world. ... Mǐn Nán (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name Bân-lâm-gú; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ... Wu (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. ... Jin (simplified: 晋语; traditional: 晉語; pinyin: jìnyǔ), or Jin-yu, is a subdivision of spoken Chinese. ...

"Tone sandhi", which is compulsory as long as the environmental conditions are met, is not to be confused with tone changes that reflect derivational or inflectional morphology. For example, in Cantonese when 糖 is pronounced "tong4", it means 'sugar', whereas when it is pronounced "tong2", it means "candy". In Taiwanese (Min Nan) morphemes, kiaⁿ (afraid) and lâng (person) may combine to form the word kiaⁿ-lâng, whose meaning varies according to the tone change. When pronounced "kiaⁿ7-lâng", it means "to be afraid of people". When pronounced "kiaⁿ1-lâng", it means "frightful". Morphology is the following: In linguistics, morphology is the study of the structure of word forms. ... Cantonese is a major dialect group or language of the Chinese language, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... Taiwanese (pe̍h-oÄ“-jÄ«: Tâi-oân-oÄ“ or Tâi-gí; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) is a variant of Amoy Min Nan Chinese spoken by about 70% of Taiwans population. ... Mǐn N n (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name B ; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ...

Cherokee has a robust tonal system in which tones may be combined in various ways, following subtle and complex tonal rules that vary from community to community. Original distribution of the Cherokee language Cherokee (; Tsalagi) is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people which uses a unique syllabary writing system. ...

Sandhi rules are also found in many of the Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico. Oto-Manguean languages (also Otomanguean) are a large family comprised of several families of Native American languages. ...

See also

• Downdrift
• Downstep (phonetics)
• Floating tonelink
• Tone (linguistics)
• Tone shift
• Tone spread
• Tone terracing