The sentences are based on the words in the Primary School Chinese syllabus. For Primary 1 and 2, the words used are from that level or lower. For the other levels, the words are all from the P1-6 word list. Words in red are from the lesson 识读字. A word will turn green if it is pronounced correctly.
读 Click on any Chinese Character to hear its pronunciation. Chinese Text-to-speech must be installed for the reader to work.
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mic Turn on microphone to check pronunciation. Button will turn green when it is listening. Button is disabled if Chinese Speech Recognition is not available.
translate Translate the sentence into English.
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The rules govern how the tone of a syllable changes when it is combined with other syllables in a word or sentence. For example:
1. Tone sandhi: When two third tones come together, the first one becomes a second tone.
2. Tone merging: When two syllables with different tones come together, the tone of the first syllable may change to match the tone of the second syllable.
3. Neutral tone: When a syllable is unstressed or occurs at the end of a phrase, it is pronounced with a neutral tone.
Normally the tone change is not written. Otherwise one will be confused as to what is the regular tone of a character. Sound out the individual words and phrase to hear the tone change. These rules can be quite challenging for learners of Mandarin Chinese and the best way to learn is to hear examples of the changes.
All practice sentences are from Tatoeba, released under a CC-BY License.