Yes! Wikipedia has a list, which also has even more references, many to papers and articles that might be freely available or available through an institution if you’re affiliate with one! I’ve added Wikipedia to the end-of-article references here, too, so that other people can find it.

Thank you for the comment! These tone changes are a bit messy and probably depends on many factors, including regional accents, sociolects and so on. I should probably revisit this topic and see if i can bring some clarity to it and add more examples. However, I do think this is mostly overkill to study in detail for most students, as most of these changes happen more or less naturally even for second language learners (at least they do for me and other advanced students I have checked). Still, it’s always good to be aware that this happens, and having more examples is then great, so thanks for sharing!

I returned to this (very good) post after being reminded of it.

I would just like to mention that Wikipedia also has some details about these optional rules for the second and fourth tones. Interestingly, it presents these tone change rules a bit differently. It also gives some more examples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Second_and_fourth_tone_change

Yes, correct. The basic rule of thumb is to sort by semantic units (words), but these boundaries are ignored as rate of speech increases. Your teacher will probably say wo2 xiang3 liao2jie3, but when speaking at more natural speed, it often is just wo2 xiang2 liao2jie3. The numbers here of course reflect tone changes, but that ought to be obvious. 🙂

我想了解一下。 Wǒ xiǎng liǎojiě yīxià.

with all possible tone changes applied the pronunciation would be

Wo2 xiang2 liao2jie3 yi2xia4?

Because the examples for tone changes are usually words or fixed expressions I had assumed that the tone combinations given above have to appear within one word/expression to trigger a tone change. So when speaking I basically have to think one syllable ahead before using a certain tone?

Thank you for this and the various other informative articles 🙂 And for the replies to comments as well!

Thanks Olle,

Linguists also share this confusion, I googled around a bit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_tones_(Middle_Chinese)#Distribution_in_modern_Chinese

“Tones typically have a slight purely-phonetic drop at the end in citation form. It is therefore likely that a tone with a drop of one unit (54, say, or 21) is not distinct from a level tone (a 55 or 22); on the other hand, what one author hears as a significant drop (53 or 31) may be perceived by another as a smaller drop so it is often ambiguous whether a transcription like 54 or 21 is a level or contour tone. Similarly, a slight drop before a rise, such as a 214, may be from the speaker approaching the target tone and so may also not be distinctive (from 14).”

The origin of tones interest me too, they’re not musical notes but the leftover effects on vowels from lost or merged consonants. Now I remember my English teacher in high school once pointed out the vowel in bad is lower and longer than bat, so when the final consonant merges when speaking fast, you can tell them apart.

The above seems like simple trivia, but it changed how I think of tones. You are right, anyone who thinks “tone deafness” is an excuse to not study tones is incorrect.

Good question! My advice is to not care about minor differences like that. I teach students that the third tone is a low tone, but that it changes to a rising tone in front of another third tone. I then also say that it optionally has a rise when stressed heavily. That’s it. The rest are fine details I’m not even sure are true. Can you even pronounce a 11 low tone in the middle of a sentence? Probably not, unless the preceding tone ends low. Same for final position. Anyway, just emphasise that it’s low, except before another third tone, and most of the rest follows naturally, in my experience!

But according to an IPA guide, in speech the third tone is a low falling (21) if it the first word, if it is sentence medial it is a low flat tone (11), and if it is sentence final it is low with a slight rise (12).

This is hard to remember, and the diacritic for the third tone throws me off when I am trying to read pinyin. Is there a way to practice the above rules? How do I not let the diacritic get in the way? The sight of it makes instinctively think of dipping and rising.

Skritter uses the standardised pronunciation (Mainland) as far as possible (and if it doesn’t you should report it). The standard pronunciation for 要是 is yao4shi0, so that’s what’s in the app. If you’re asking how to know this as a student, you can’t, you have to learn that along with tones in general. There are some patterns, but you can’t predict which words have neutral tones without looking them up. Note that in most cases where there is a neutral tone, it’s often acceptable (sometimes equally acceptable) to pronounce it with full tones.