Week 7-8 Tones and more practice

I focused on the tonal changes of Suzhou dialect in Week 7 and 8.

In Mandarin Chinese, there are four tones:

1. The 'first tone' or 'high flat tone' 
2. The 'second tone' or 'rising tone' 
3. The 'third tone' or 'dipping tone'
4. The 'fourth tone' or 'falling tone' 

The tonal system of Suzhou dialect is a little more complicated than Mandarin Chinese. 

In Suzhou dialect, tones are not exactly as they are in Mandarin and we have 3 more tones.

I tried to match tones in Suzhou dialect with mandarin tones:

Mandarin                                  Suzhou Dialect

first tone                                                 1 

                                                             2

Fourth tone                                            3

Third tone                                              4

                                                             5

                                                             6

second tone                                           7

Here are my demonstration of these tones in Suzhou dialect:

1 yin pin: 开 /kɛ/  to open

2 yang ping: 爬 /bʊ:/ to crawl

3 shang: 水 /sjʊ/ water

4 yin qu: 看/ku/ to look

5 yang qu: 笨 /ben/ stupid

6 yin ru: 只 /tsa/ measure word for puppies

7 yang ru: 白 /ba/ white

Here are some more practice focusing on consonants and vowels I mentioned last few weeks: