Many people who are interested in learning Chinese will feel some kind of difficulty with four tones in Chinese characters pronunciation, because there are rarely four tones in other languages. For example, in English there are only two tones, rising and falling. So if your native language is English, you will spend more time to handle the four tones when you want to learn spoken Chinese. Here, I would like to talk about some similarities between spoken English and Chinese in tone. I hope it could be helpful for you.

Yes, really there are some similarities between English and Chinese in tone.

Both have the same tone called “light tone”, and it is quite easy to understand and handle it.

Apart from the light tone, if you listen carefully, you can find that the rising and falling tone in English vowel sounds are almost same as the second and fourth tone in many Chinese characters. For instance, “yes” in rising tone is same as Chinese character 爷 / 爺 (yé) (grandpa). And the “yes” in falling tone is same as Chinese character 夜 (yè) (night)，页/頁(yè) (a page) in fourth tone. So, for people whose native language is English, when you want to read out many Chinese characters, just read them in the way same as you read out vowel sounds in many English words.

Here are some more examples:

油 (yóu) (oil)，游 (yóu) (swimming)，由 (yóu) are same as “you” in rising tone，”you” in falling tone is same as 又 (yòu) (again)，右 (yòu) (right)，幼 (yòu) 

薄 (bó) (thin) is same as “Bob” vowel sounds in rising tone，bob in falling tone is same as 抱(bào) (huge)，报(bào)，暴(bào)

娃 (wá) (baby) is same as “What” vowel sounds in rising tone，”what” in falling tone is same as 哇(wà)，袜 / 襪 (wà) (socks)

胡 (hú)，湖 (hú) (lake)，狐(fox) are same as “Who” in rising tone，”who” in falling tone is same as 户(hù)，互(hù)

豪 (háo) is same as “house” vowel sounds in rising tone，”house” in falling tone is same as 号 / 號( hào)，好(hào)，耗 （hào）

Next time, I will talk about the third tone that you can find in many Chinese characters. Maybe that is one of the most difficult in Chinese pronunciation. Especially, when you read a Chinese word that is a combination of two third tone Chinese characters. That could be very hard to read out it correctly and accurately. Actually, there is some trick. See you next time. :-)