【Weekly Chinese Learning】How to Easily Remember and Pronounce the Third Tone? - ③

【Three Tips of the Chinese Third Tone】

· The Third Tone
Before we start today's topic - the third tone, I would like to share an interesting phenomenon that I found during my teaching. If you are good at music or sing well, mastering tones will be easier for you.
Maybe it is because the scales of the tones are similar to the scales in music. So if you can sing well, the tones won't be a big problem for you.

· The Feeling of the Third Tone
The third tone is the second harder one of all tones. Not only because it is hard to pronounce itself, but also because it will change when it meets other tones.
When there are two third tones together, we change the first third tone and pronounce it as the second tone. When the third tone meets the second tone, what will happen?

There are three tips of the third tone. 

Tip 1
Firstly, let's see how it sounds. 
The third tone goes down from scale "2" to scale "1", then goes up from scale "2" to scale "4", which we named "214". When you ask permission in a euphemistic manner, you use the English sentence "May I ...?". This can help you with the feeling of the third tone.
Let's compare it with some Chinese characters. For instance, "May I ...?", "酒 jiǔ"; "May I ...?", "美 měi".

Tip 2
When there are two characters with two third tones together, we change the first third tone and pronounce it as the second tone. For instance, "美女 měinǚ - pretty girl", we make the first third tone shorter and make it sound like the second tone, so it will be "美女 méinǚ".

Tip 3
When the third tone meets the second tone, we separate the third tone "214" into "213" and "34". Then we only pronounce the "213" part of the third tone and superimposed the "34" part with the second tone of the second character. For instance, "感觉 - feeling", we don't pronounce it as "感觉 gǎnjué", but "感觉 gan(213) jue(35)".
 
Give you an example to try.
警察 jǐngchá, 旅游 lǚyóu

We made a video for showing you how to get a feeling of the third tone and the change of it.
Feel free to contact us if you need the video, please. 


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