Chinese Tones Practice Candy or Soup with audio

Chinese Tones candy or soup?

This tone card has two Chinese words with the same sound but different tones.  Listen to the audio and have your child point to the matching picture.

Listen to the audio recording for the tone card.

What does Bao Bao want? Candy or soup?

How about Miss Panda?  Does Miss Panda want to have candy or soup?

What does your child want?  How about you?

Chinese Tones Practice Candy or Soup in audio:

Color coding the tones

We have talked about how tones are marked with pinyin and the tone marks in Tone Card: dumplings or sleep.  In addition to the tone marks, Dr. Terry Waltz has color-coded the tones.  It is another way to read the tones in Chinese.

The sentence example I use for the color-coded tones is: The garden is very pretty – Huā yuáN hǎo piào Liang. You can see that all four tones and the light neutral tone are in this one sentence.  You can see each tone and its representation below.

• 1st tone (   ̄  ) is blue.  花 HUĀ

• 2nd tone (   ́  ) is green. 園 | 园 yuáN

• 3rd tone (   ̌  ) is black. 好 hǎo

• 4th tone (   ̀  ) is red. 漂 piào

• light tone (   ˙  ) is grey. 亮 Liàng

Most of the Chinese language learning books use pinyin with tone marks.  You will also see some using pinyin with numbers to indicate tones.  Dr. Terry Waltz readers are color-coded and as learners advance, the Chinese text will all be in black.

For young learners, reading without Chinese pinyin support is the best way to start.

Also in the Chinese Tones series

Tone card: Dumplings or sleep?

Chinese Toolbox: Tips to Help You Practice Tones with Audio