Pinyin

Tone Sandhi of the third tone

You might have noticed that it’s a bit hard to collocate the third tone with another third tone. Like: 手表（shǒu biǎo ). So when a third tone goes with another third tone, the first third tone will change to the second tone, to make the whole tone more natural. For example: 手表 (shóu biǎo).

When the third tone goes with the other three tone, actually it’s also difficult to pronounce the tone fully. In spoken Chinese, when the third tone meets other tones, you only need to pronounce “half” of the third tone.

Now let’s practise some words:

老师 lǎoshī 老人 lǎorén 考场 káochǎng 考试 kǎoshì

每天 měitiān 每年 měinián 美好 méihǎo 美丽 měilì