Tone Name

Tone Name

Tones in Chinese derive from the traditional Middle Chinese tone classes, known as Ping Sheng (平聲), Shang Sheng (上聲), Qu Sheng (去聲), and Ru Sheng (入聲), which in English in the linguistic literature, are sometimes called the level, rising, departing and entering tones. The Ru sheng characters derive from characters in Middle Chinese which end in -p, -t or k.

In modern dialects, characters which derive from these four Middle Chinese tone classes may be split into two registers, yin (陰) and yang (陽), sometimes they have been termed upper and lower registers respectively, although this may be a misnomer, as some dialects having yin splittings may exhibit a tone pitch which is lower, and conversely, the yang register may exhibit a higher tone pitch.

So, when the four tone classes split, we form eight tone types,

Yin Ping, Yang Ping, Yin Shang, Yang Shang, Yin Qu, Yang Qu, Yin Ru and Yang Ru.

Cantonese has a further splitting of the Yin Ru tone, thus exhibiting 9 tones. Other dialects like Hakka have a merged Shang tone as does Mandarin. There are some dialects which have a complex set of tone splittings, and yin and yang are thus insufficient to cover these exceptional cases.