Tones
There are 8 tones in Teochew. In many resources, you will see a number after each syllable, indicating which tone it is.
| Tone | Description | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Middle | shirt | san1 | 衫 | |
| 2 | Falling | hand | chiu2 | 手 | |
| 3 | Low Falling, Rising | vegetables | chai3 | 菜 | |
| 4 | Middle Short (Checked) | meat | bhah4 | 肉 | |
| 5 | High | head | tao5 | 头 | |
| 6 | Rising | old | lao6 | 老 | |
| 7 | Low | big | dua7 | 大 | |
| 8 | High Short (Checked) | white | beh8 | 白 | |
I like to categorize the tones into these subsets:
- Tones 1, 5, and 7 have a steady pitch. Note that these are relative—the exact pitches will vary from person to person.
- Tones 2 and 6 change in pitch while you say them.
- Tones 4 and 8 are checked tones that always have an ending sound with h, k, or p.
- Tone 3 subtly falls and rises, but it honestly sounds indistinguishable from tone 7 to me. (They have different tone change rules though!) Different people will stress how much rising/falling to use here.
Many words undergo tone change when placed in front of another word. This is called sandhi. The table below shows the same words as above, but placed in front of another word to demonstrate how their tones change.
| Original Tone | Changed Tone | Example | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | clothes | san1 kou3 | 衫裤 | |
| 2 | 6 | finger | chiu(6) jain2 | 手指 | |
| 3 | 2 (or 5) | radish | chai(2) tao5 | 菜头 | |
| 4 | 8 | dried, shredded pork | bhah(8) yong5 | 肉绒 | |
| 5 | 7 | hair (on your head) | tao(7) mo5 | 头毛 | |
| 6 | 7 | great grandmother | lao(7) ma2 | 老妈 | |
| 7 | 7 | aunt (dad's oldest sister) | dua7 gou1 | 大姑 | |
| 8 | 4 | napa cabbage | beh(4) chai3 | 白菜 |
In the translations on this site, if a word has undergone tone change, the spoken tone will be displayed in parentheses. If a word originally has tone 3 and undergoes tone change, I will always display tone 2 for it, but my audio clips will vary between actually saying it with tone 2 or tone 5. I'm not consistent, and it's mainly because it takes more effort to say something with tone 2 in the middle of a phrase 😅