Tone name

Template:Short description In tonal languages, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use.

Chinese

File:Pinyin Tone Chart.svg

Pitch contours of the four Mandarin tones

In contemporary standard Chinese (Mandarin), the tones are numbered from 1 to 4. They are descended from but not identical to the historical four tones of Middle Chinese, namely level (Template:Zh), rising (Template:Zh), departing (Template:Zh), and entering (Template:Zh), each split into yin (Template:Zh) and yang (Template:Zh) registers, and the categories of high and low syllables.

Vietnamese

File:Vietnamese tone northern.svg

Northern Vietnamese (non-Hanoi) tones as uttered by a male speaker in isolation.

Standard Vietnamese has six tones, known as ngang, sắc, huyền, hỏi, ngã, and nặng tones.

Thai

Thai has five phonemic tones: mid, low, falling, high and rising, sometimes referred to in older reference works as rectus, gravis, circumflexus, altus and demissus, respectively. The table shows an example of both the phonemic tones and their phonetic realization, in the IPA.

File:Thai tones.svg

Thai language tone chart

Tone	Thai	Example	Phonemic	Phonetic	Example meaning in English
mid	สามัญ	นา			paddy field
low	เอก	หน่า		or	(a nickname)
falling	โท	หน้า			face, front
high	ตรี	น้า		or	maternal aunt or uncle younger than one's mother
rising	จัตวา	หนา		or	thick

See also

• Tone letter
• Tone number
• Archaic & modern four tones in Chinese