these numbers are helpful to anyone who knows mandarin and wants to learn any of the three major subvarieties of chinese after mandarin. these numbers will help you with remembering tones (especially the ones that have an approximate 100% rate of occurrence) by indicating common patterns and links between the tones of one variety of chinese and the tones of mandarin.
m# = mandarin tone
c# = cantonese tone
t# = taiwanese tone
s# = shanghainese tone
(#/#) or (#%) = approximate likelihood of occurence
? = random
all numbers are approximate based on mathematical assumptions stated in the notes below
example 1: “m3 => c2 (2/3), c5 (1/3)” means that a word that is a 3rd tone in mandarin pinyin will be a 2nd tone in cantonese jyutping most of the time (in about 2/3 instances), and will be a 5th tone in cantonese jyutping some of the time (in about 1/3 of instances)
example 2: “t3 => m4 (100%)” means that a 3rd tone in taiwanese will practically always be a fourth tone in mandarin, but doesn’t mean that a fourth tone in mandarin will always be a third tone in taiwanese
m=>c
m1 => c1 (100%)
m2 => c4 (1/2), c6 (1/2)
m3 => c2 (2/3), c5 (1/3)
m4 => c6 (4/7), c3 (2/7), c5 (1/7)
m=>t
m1 => t1 (100%)
m2 => t5 (50%), t8 (50%)
m3 => t2/t6 (100%)
m4 => t3 (2/7), t7 (2/7), t8 (2/7), t2/t6 (1/7)
m=>s
m1 => s1 (100%)
m2 => s2 (100%)
m3 => s1 (2/3), s2 (1/3)
m4 => s2 (5/7), s1 (2/7)
c=>m
c1 => m1 (2/3), m? (1/3)
c2 => m3 (100%)
c3 => m4 (2/3), m? (1/3)
c4 => m2 (100%)
c5 => m3 (1/2), m4 (1/2)
c6 => m4 (2/3), m2 (1/3)
t=>m
t1 => m1 (100%)
t2/t6 => m3 (3/4), m4 (1/4)
t3 => m4 (100%)
t4 => m?
t5 => m2 (100%)
t7 => m4 (100%)
t8 => m2 (1/2), m4 (1/2)
s=>m
s1 = m1 (1/4), m3 (1/4), m4 (1/4), m? (1/4)
s2 = m4 (5/8), m2 (1/4), m3 (1/8)
statistics are derived from of the table found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_tones, with Beijing representing Mandarin and Amoy representing Taiwanese (although Xiamen is not in Taiwan, the two regions’ dialects are similar enough dialects of the Southern variety of the Min variety of Chinese. a Chinese version of the chart is available here: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%9B%E8%81%B2, but the IPA tone lettering symbol and not just the number is also available on the English page, but not the Chinese page. information on IPA tone lettering can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_letter)
above mandarin tones are based off of standardized pinyin (1-4).
1. high level
2. high/mid rising
3. low rising/low falling then rising
4. high falling
(the 5th, or “light” tone only appears as a phonological feature when a word’s original tone is stripped from it in certain usages)
above cantonese tones are based off of standardized jyutping (1-6).
1. high level
2. high rising
3. mid level
4. low falling
5. low rising
6. low level
above taiwanese tones are based off of the traditional analysis (1-8, with tones 2 and 6 being counted as the same tone), which can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Hokkien#Tones
1. high level
2. falling/ high falling
3. low falling/ low level
4. mid stopped/ low stopped
5. rising
6. same as 2
7. mid level
8. high stopped
above shanghainese tones are based off of traditional descriptions, which can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghainese#Tones
1. high (yin)
2. low (yang)
*note that the tone of a word in shanghainese only matters when it’s in the initial position of a word or set phrase and it dictates the pitch of the syllables that follow it
(results for each tone are placed in order of likelihood, assuming that for each of the 4 middle chinese tones [level, rising, departing, entering], there are an equal number of words within the chinese language, and that furthermore, each tone, when divided in half by correspondence to voiceless or voiced syllable onset consonants, which said divisions can be divided even further into paired subgroups as sonorant or obstruent, as tenuis or aspirated, or as short or long, then each voiceless and each voiced group will account for an assumed 1/8 of the words in the language, and each said subgroup below voiceless and voiced will be assumed to account for 1/16 of the words in the language. under these assumptions, one can conjecture that the most common tones in mandarin are, in descending order, the fourth, the second, the third, and then the first)
*note that due to the loss of the entering tone in mandarin, words which previously had an entering tone in middle chinese (usually ending with a stop) can be found distributed randomly throughout any of the four mandarin tones if the onset syllable is voiceless. this means that 1/8 of the words in mandarin cannot have their tones converted into the tones of another language using probability and statistics, but on the contrary, having the tones of another variety of chinese as known, one may convert tones from said variety into mandarin (with a probability as the result), and such instances where equivalent tone of another variety of chinese that corresponds to the voiceless entering of middle chinese and the corresponding mandarin tone will be random, said instance will be designated by a question mark in the above statistics
