II. Some distinctive features of Chinese

Chinese is a tonal language, that is, a change of pitch on a word/syllable changes its meaning among words of similar forms. There are four basic tones in Chinese, and each is represented by a different tone mark. Take the spelling "ma" for example:

1st tone (high flat tone, with the tone mark "— " on top of the vowel): m` -- "mother"

2nd tone (high rising tone, with the tone mark "/ " on top of the vowel): m1 -- "hemp"

3rd tone (falling-rising tone, with the tone mark "a " on top of the vowel): m2 -- "horse"

4th tone (falling tone, with the tone mark "\ " on top of the vowel): m3 -- "scold"

While there are 408 sounds of finals (similar to "vowels" in a loose sense) and combinations of initials (similar to "consonants") and finals in the Chinese sound system, the total number of meaningful syllables with tones reaches 1,382 in Mandarin Chinese.

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