For many English-speaking students of Chinese, the fact that tone contours can make the difference in meaning between one Chinese word and another is a major stumbling block. A simple example:
鱼跃 yúyuè with 2nd/4th
tones (rising, then falling) means “dive.”
预约 yùyuē with 4th/1st
tones (falling, then high-level) means “reserve.”
So one must remember the tone
contour of a word as well as the rest of the pronunciation or risk being
misunderstood (sometimes disastrously).
My mnemonic system for Chinese character pronunciation includes the tone of the character as part of the
system. Individual characters in Mandarin have one of four tones, which some
grammarian creatively named 1st tone, 2nd tone, 3rd
tone, and 4th tone. We’ll leave a description of the individual
tones for another time, but note the diacritical marks used to mark each tone:
1st tone: ā
2nd tone: á
3rd tone: ă
4th tone: à
The diacritical shapes roughly represent the pitch contour of the
respective tone (rising for 2nd, falling for 4th, etc.)
In an ideal world, remembering the
tone for each individual character would allow you to predict the tone contours
of compound words made of two or more characters. Unfortunately, the tones of
Chinese syllables appear to mutate spontaneously when combined with other
syllables. This does not happen every time, but it happens often enough to pose
difficulty.
For example, in the word
当年 dāngnián “that year”,
the character 当 is pronounced dāng, with a 1st
(high level) tone, whereas in the word
当天 dàngtiān “that day”,
the character 当 is pronounced dàng, with a 4th
(falling) tone. (This is all assuming my dictionary knows what it’s talking
about.) The function of the character appears to be identical in both words, so
why the change? If there are rules controlling this, I haven’t figured them out
yet.
So we need a way to remember the tone contours of
words consisting of more than one syllable—particularly two-syllable words,
which are the most common. I created a set of standard code words based on the
Major system for memorizing numbers. In compound words, a syllable may have one
of five tones, because certain syllables of compound words lose their
normal tone, becoming a “neutral” tone. A neutral-tone syllable is pronounced
quickly, with a pitch slightly lower than a preceding 1st or 2nd
tone, and slightly higher than a preceding 3rd or 4th
tone. The English word “basket” is normally pronounced with a fairly good
approximation of 1st tone followed by neutral tone. In Pinyin the
neutral tone is indicated by the absence of any diacritical mark. For example: duōme
is 1st tone followed by neutral tone.
For the purpose of memorization, I assigned the
digit 5 to neutral tone. The Major system uses a consonant sound to represent a
single numerical digit. In particular:
t, d, or th represents 1;
n represents 2;
m represents 3;
r represents 4;
l represents 5.
Other consonant sounds (with the exception of w,
h, y) represent other digits, but the foregoing is is all we need for this
purpose. Vowels of a word represent no digit. Take as an example the word
“root”. The r represents 4, the t represents 1, and the oo
represents nothing; thus this word serves to encode the digit sequence 4-1.
The goal now is to choose a word representing
each pair of digits describing the tone pattern of a Chinese disyllable. Take
as an example the previously-mentioned yùyuē (tones 4-1). To represent this I need a word with the sequence of
consonants r followed by t, d, or th; I choose
“rawhide”.
Why not the forementioned “root”? I prefer to use a two-syllable
word and try to get used to pronouncing it with the particular tone contour
that it represents:
ràwhīde
As this sinks in, it eliminates one
step of the decoding process: the word directly represents the given tone
contour.
The code word is put to use by
mentally linking it with the term that it applies to; recall that yùyuē means “reserve”. I can use a
sentence like:
I reserved one of the special rawhide plane seats.
And then henceforth I use “rawhide”
whenever necessary to represent the tone contour of any word with a 1st/4th
tone pattern, such as the previously mentioned dàngtiān “that day”:
That day we rode until our hides were raw.
This sentence then helps me recall that 当天 is pronounced with 4th and
1st tones.
Here, then, is the list of code words for all
two-syllable contours (note that, as always, it is the sounds that
encode digits rather than the written letters):
Tones
|
digits
|
consonants
|
word
|
āā
|
1st/1st
|
t-t
|
tattoo
|
āá
|
1st/2nd
|
d-n
|
Houdini
|
āă
|
1st/3rd
|
t-m
|
atom
|
āà
|
1st/4th
|
t-r
|
otter
|
āa
|
1st/5th
|
t-l
|
hotel
|
áā
|
2nd/1st
|
n-t
|
nightie
|
áá
|
2nd/2nd
|
n-n
|
onion
|
áă
|
2nd/3rd
|
n-m
|
Nemo
|
áà
|
2nd/4th
|
n-r
|
wiener
|
áa
|
2nd/5th
|
n-l
|
in-law
|
ăā
|
3rd/1st
|
m-d
|
meadow
|
ăá
|
3rd/2nd
|
m-n
|
Mona (Lisa)
|
ăă
|
3rd/3rd
|
m-m
|
mummy
|
ăà
|
3rd/4th
|
m-r
|
hammer
|
ăa
|
3rd/5th
|
m-l
|
mullah
|
àā
|
4th/1st
|
r-h
|
rawhide
|
àá
|
4th/2nd
|
r-n
|
rhino
|
àă
|
4th/3rd
|
r-m
|
harem
|
àà
|
4th/4th
|
r-r
|
warrior
|
àa
|
4th/5th
|
r-l
|
oriole
|
The principle can be extended to three or more
syllables; for example, the tone contour 会员卡 huìyuánkă “membership card” can be encoded as digits 4th/2nd/3rd
and the consonant sequence r-n-m, “uranium” for example. As the string of
digits gets larger you will need to resort to phrases of two and more words. I
haven’t tried to standardize the code words for more than two syllables at a
time.
(A completely different approach: using the
digits of the Major system is nothing more than a convenience which makes it
easier to commit the system to memory. Once you've made the mental connection, any word can serve to represent any
concept, although something concrete and visualizable is better. An alternate approach
would be to choose for each tone contour a specific Chinese word exemplifying
the pattern; for example, àā could be
represented by 牧师 mùshī “pastor.”)
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