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On the topic of tones, I'd like to clarify something. It's true that few speak in the CCTV way, but to each Mandarin tone there are several realizations (perhap
by jhanschoo 6y ago
On the topic of tones, I'd like to clarify something. It's true that few speak in the CCTV way, but to each Mandarin tone there are several realizations (perhaps altered by context) that people recognize as belonging to the same tone. That is, there are in Mandarin (and in any modern Chinese language), tonemes.
Note that when we survey the multiple dialects in China, we see that they more or less preserve the Middle Chinese 4 tones, even though the tones' realizations have evolved so greatly such that the Middle Chinese tones' actual realizations are but unreconstructible.