Chinese languages

Chinese names for tones

When discussing tones with native Mandarin speakers, I use the following names to identify the 5 tones of Mandarin.
(1) 阴平声 high, (2) 阳平声 rising, (3) 上声 dipping, (4) 去声 falling, (5) 轻声 neutral

This is fine for discussing any of the 5 tones of Mandarin Chinese. However, when I want to identify a tone outside of Mandarin Chinese, this is where I need the opinion of native Mandarin speakers.

Here are some tones (outside of Mandarin) that I am refering to by their name in Chinese.

低平声 (literally low level tone)
入声 (literally entering tone) (i.e. a syllable that ends in a glottal stop)
中平声 (literally mid level tone)

So my question is this. Would you understand 低平声, 入声 and 中平声 if I used these words with you?

Hello Johny,

I'm admittedly not a native speaker, but I would definitely understand you if you used those words in Chinese. In English, you would probably have to explain the concept of a tone before being able to speak of mid level tones or the like. But once the other person got the idea, it shouldn't be that much of a problem.

I would however be careful to use the word 入声/entering tone for tones in non-sinitic languages because the term is part of the original four-tone distinction of Middle Chinese (平上去入). 平 was a level tone, 上 and 下 probably a rising and falling one respectively, 入 was the term for the shortened tone on syllables with a -p, -t or -k ending. However as Chinese changed over the centuries, the tones also changed. Therefore, the 上, 去 and 入 distinction is today not more than a name and doesn't really describe what the tone sounds like (平 is a different case, I'll come to it later). Indeed, they sound very different from each other in the different Chinese languages. For example, 阳平声 is a high rising tone in Mandarin (about 35 for Beijing), but in Taiwanese Hokkien for example, it is a dipping tone much like 上声 in Mandarin, but at a higher pitch (about 325). Therefore, I you cannot use 上, 去 and 入 to refer to tones in other languages. 平 is a slightly different case because apart from the ancient 平 category, it is also used to describe a level tone contour.

To make things short, for non-sinitic languages I would use terms like 中平生、高升声 and so on and avoid the terms 上, 去 and 入.

Btw., I would be interested in hearing your experiences of using the terms you listed for the Mandarin tones. I would have thought that the average Chinese is maybe familiar with the terms 第一、二、三、四声 but not with the terms 阴平、阳平 and so on.

Regards,

Abun

And btw, sorry for getting the word seperation in your user name wrong