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Lesson Transcript

Hi everyone.
Welcome to The Ultimate Chinese Pronunciation Guide.
In this lesson, you'll learn a few rules which will require you to change the tone of a syllable, in a word or sentence.
Pinyin is quite useful for showing you how to pronounce something in Chinese, however it isn't a perfect system.
You'll need to learn these rules because it won't be reflected in the pinyin!
"NO FALLING AND RISING TONES NEXT TO EACH OTHER"
You cannot have two falling and rising tones next to each other.
When this happens, you need to pronounce every falling and rising tone -- except for the last one, as a rising tone.
很好
Here's an example with 3 falling and rising tones in a row.
你很好
OK. Now let's move on to the next tone change rule.
"TONE CHANGE FOR 不"
This character is a falling tone by itself.
However, if the following tone is *also* a falling tone, it will change to a rising tone.
不是
不会
不错
"TONE CHANGE FOR 一"
This character is a high tone by itself or when it's used as a number.
However for all other cases, if the following tone is a falling tone, it should be pronounced as a rising tone.
一半
一步
一次
And when the following tone is any other tone that *isn't* a falling tone, then it'll be pronounced as a falling tone.
一般
一直
一起
"QUIZ TIME" It's quiz time!
Let's see if you can apply these rules in the real world.
How should you pronounce the first character?
不太
The following character is a falling tone, so this character is pronounced with a rising tone.
What about this one?
一些
Since the following tone is a high tone, the first character is pronounced with a falling tone.
If the following tone would've been a falling tone, than this character would've been pronounced as a rising tone.
Okay, lucky last!
好懂
Remember, the first character is pronounced as a falling tone because you cannot have falling and rising tones next to each other.
In this lesson, you learnt a few tone change rules in Chinese!
In the next lesson, we'll review the material that we've covered in this series.
How did you do on the quiz? Please comment and share your thoughts!
See you in the next Ultimate Chinese Pronunciation Guide lesson!

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