Shareables · HSK 0 · 基 · Foundations
四声与轻声 · The Four Tones and Neutral Tone
The Four Tones and Neutral Tone
Opens the card studio: pick a size, switch paper or night, add a note of your own, then save the PNG or hand it straight to the share sheet.
例 · WORKED EXAMPLES
mā vs mà妈 vs 骂mom vs to scoldSame syllable, opposite pitch: high-flat means 'mom', sharp-fall means 'scold'. Tones aren't decoration — they're the word.
māma妈妈momThe second syllable is neutral: short and light, no pitch shape of its own. Very common in everyday words (爸爸, 谢谢, 什么).
tāng · táng · tǎng · tàng汤 · 糖 · 躺 · 烫soup · sugar · to lie down · scalding hotAnother four-way family. Ordering soup and saying 'scalding' instead is a tone mistake — this is why the ear work matters.
Taught in the course as 四声与轻声 · The Four Tones and Neutral Tone.
What this card is
A one-page Chinese lesson from the HSK 0 set, filed under 基 · Foundations. The Four Tones and Neutral Tone
How to use it
Open the card studio above, choose a size (9:16 for TikTok and Stories, 4:5 for a feed, 1.91:1 for a link preview), then save the PNG or share it directly. The same content is written out on this page, so you can read or copy it as text.
Where it fits
See where this level sits in the HSK levels guide, browse every card, or look any word up in the dictionary.
More from HSK 0
- 中国 · The country in the middle — Two characters, and the second one is a picture of a border with something inside it.
- 十二生肖 · The twelve zodiac animals — Twelve animals, one per year, in the order they finished the race.
- 福 · Why it's hung upside down — A pun you can see: upside-down 福 sounds exactly like fortune arriving.
- 确 · Confirm the language — Ask before you dive in — older speakers, ideally ones with no English, tend to have the best stories.
- 打招呼与回应 · Say hello and answer back — Say hello and answer back
- 拼音声母与韵母 · Pinyin Initials and Finals — Pinyin Initials and Finals
- 基本笔画与笔顺规则 · Basic Strokes and Stroke-Order Rules — Basic Strokes and Stroke-Order Rules
- 高频部首与意义线索 · High-Frequency Radicals as Meaning Cues — 部首 · Radicals as Meaning Cues
A card is one idea. The course is the map they all sit on. HSK 0 through HSK 6 on a prerequisite-ordered knowledge graph: active recall in small steps, reviews timed to land just before you would forget, and speaking practice built on the comment + question method. From $49 once for lifetime access.
See plans