Mandarin syllables are not only consonants and vowels. The pitch pattern is part of the word. mā (mother), má (hemp), mǎ (horse) and mà (to scold) are different items in a dictionary. If you only learn the letters ma, you have not learned the words.
Tones feel mysterious until you treat them like any other contrast. English uses pitch for attitude. Mandarin uses pitch to tell words apart. You can hear the difference long before you can draw a perfect textbook contour.
The four tones
- High and level: mā. Stay high. Do not slide.
- Rising: má. Start mid and go up, like a short question in English, but as part of the word, not as punctuation.
- Low dip: mǎ. In isolation, many teachers describe a fall then a rise. In running speech the third tone is often a low, flat-ish syllable unless it sits at the end of a phrase.
- Falling: mà. Start high and drop. Short, decisive.
Textbooks draw arrows. Your ear learns them faster than any diagram. Minimal sets such as mā / má / mǎ / mà are useful because the letters stay still while the tone moves.
The mark sits on a vowel, not on the initial. The rules for which vowel takes the mark (hao → hǎo, xiao → xiǎo) are part of standard Pinyin spelling. You do not put a mark on every letter.
Neutral tone
Some syllables are unstressed. In Pinyin they may have no mark: ma in 吗, zi in 桌子. Input tools sometimes call this tone 5. The Pinyin Writer documents a dotted neutral-tone style when you type 5.
Neutral tone is not a fifth full contour in the same sense as the first four. It is weaker and shorter. Its exact pitch depends on the syllable before it. Beginners can treat it as "lighter" and then refine by listening.
Sandhi: tones that change next to other tones
Tones are not glued to a character in every environment. The famous case is two third tones in a row: 你好 is nǐ hǎo in isolation, but in speech the first syllable rises, so people say something closer to ní hǎo. Dictionaries and many converters still write nǐ hǎo because they print the citation form.
There are other sandhi patterns, including the behavior of 不 and 一. A converter that writes dictionary tones may not apply every sandhi rule the way a teacher would in class. That is a notation choice, not always a pronunciation error.
If you generate Pinyin for a sentence with the Pinyin converter, compare it to how you would say the line aloud. Use the output as a reading aid, then listen to a human or a recording for sandhi.
Why tones go missing in real files
People drop marks in chat because ASCII is faster. Some fonts render ǎ poorly. Copy-and-paste through an old system strips combining characters. Tone marks vs tone numbers explains when ma3 is the more durable spelling.
If you already have characters and only need marks added, do not type the tones by hand for a whole chapter. Generate them, then fix the polyphones.
Frequently asked questions
Do all Chinese languages use these four tones? No. This page is Mandarin. Cantonese, Shanghainese and others have different tone systems.
Can I ignore tones as a beginner? You can postpone perfection. You cannot postpone the idea that tone is part of the word. Listen from day one.
Why does my teacher say the third tone is just low? Because in connected speech it often is. The dipping description is for the isolated citation form.
Does this site play audio? The converters write Pinyin. They do not replace a speaker or a textbook recording.
If two words have the same letters and different tones, will a converter know which is which? When it starts from characters, yes: the character already picked the word. When you type ma without a number, no.