Mandarin Chinese has four pitched tones and a "toneless" tone. The reason for having these tones is probably that the Chinese language has very few possible syllables -- approximately 400 -- while English has about 12,000. For this reason, there may be more homophonic words , words with the same sound expressing different meanings, in Chinese than in most other languages. Apparently tones help the relatively small number of syllables to multiply and thereby alleviate but not completely solve the problem. Learning Chinese in context, therefore, is very important.

Chinese use only one syllable "da" and yet can tell the difference betwee "to hang over something" ( da1 ), "to answer" (da2), "to hit" (da3), and "big" (da4). Yes, the secret lies in the tones.

The numbers after each of the syllables indicates the tone. In normal text this is indicated as . In the diagram below you can see the tones.

Tone      Description
1st         High and level.
2nd        Starts medium in tone, then rises to the top.
3rd         Starts low, dips to the bottom, then rises toward the top.
4th        Starts at the top, then falls sharp and strong to the bottom.
Neutral    Flat, with no emphasis

This diagram helps visualize the pitches of the four tones: