Chinese is a tonal language, meaning that each syllable has a specific tone (a different pitch contour). If you change the tone, you change the word. In all, there are four tones in Chinese and in this article, we're going to look closer on the third tone, which is perhaps the most tricky and the one that foreigners get wrong most often.

Third tone basics

The reason the third tone is tricky is quite simple: it goes through a lot of tone changes that makes it more complex than the other tones that don't change as much.


Here are the basic rules for how the third tone is pronounced in Mandarin:

1. When in isolation or stressed in a sentence, it is pronounced as a falling-rising tone (also called "dipping tone"). Note that this pronunciation is actually quite rare in natural speech. Teachers use it a lot, but that's because they usually speak in an exaggerated manner.
2. When followed by another third tone, the first third tone changes to a rising tone which is similar to a second tone. This change is obligatory and will lead to confusion if you don't include it. One  very common example of this is the greeting ?? nihao, which is read more like níhao, although it should never be written like that.
3. Whet followed by anything but another third tone, the third tone is just a low tone (or a low-falling tone, it doesn't really matter which). It is very common that textbooks fail to mention this and that native speakers aren't aware that this happens, although they do of course pronounce it this way. If you want something in Chinese, the word to use it ?? xiangyào. The first syllable in that word should be low, followed by a falling fourth tone. The same is true for ?? (??) Meiguó "America". You should not go up on the first syllable "Mei".

If you follow these three rules, your third tones will be much better than 90% of Chinese students out there. If you want to know more about the importance of realizing that the third tone is actually a low tone in most cases, check this article.

Several third tones in a row

One problem that pops up very early in any beginner Chinese course is what to do with several third tones in a row. This isn't all that common, but it does happen and there are sentences that typically appear in the first chapter that are examples of this, such as ??? wohenhao "I'm also fine/good" or ??? niyeyou "you also have (something)".

The tone changes in cases like these can be very complicated, but there is a rule that will take care of a large majority of them. The trick is to separate the phrase into meaningful units (or semantic units) and then apply the third tone rules above to each unit. If there are still any consecutive third tones left, apply the rules again until there are none.

Many third tones in a row: An example

To show you a case that can go both ways, let's look at ??? (???) maihaojiu, which can either be understood as [mai] [haojiu] "Buying good whine" or [maihao] [jiu] "Finished buying wine". Thus, there are two ways of pronouncing this sentence. In the first case, [mai] [haojiu], the second syllable hao changes to a rising tone. After that, there are no consecutive third tones, so the pronunciation should be mai háojiu. In the second case, [maihao] [jiu], we first need to change mai to a rising tone. Then, since there are still two consecutive third tones left, we also need to change hao to a rising tone, giving the final result: máiháo jiu.

To summarize:

1. [mai] [haojiu] -> mai háojiu = "Buying good whine"
2. [maihao] [jiu] -> máiháo jiu = "Finished buying wine"

An extra note about rate of speech

It should be noted that the speed at which someone speaks is important. The quicker, the more changes are likely to take place. The two examples brought up in the beginning of this article are usually pronounced wóhénhao and níyéyou respectively. Learning when to change takes time, but since the changes are largely based on units of words, the better your vocabulary is, the more natural the tone changes will become.