Tones are an important part of Chinese, which are the variation of pitch within a syllable and are used to distinguish words with same Pinyin. There are basiclly four tones and one neutral tone in Mandarin Chinese. The following chart illustates the four basic tones.
Basic Four Tone Marks
| Tones | Tone Marks | Descriptons | Examples |
| 1st tone |  |
阴平 high level | dā 耷(drop down) |
| 2nd tone |  |
阳平 high rising | dá 答(answer) |
| 3rd tone |  |
上声 low dipping | dǎ 打(hit) |
| 4th tone |  |
去声 high falling | dà 大(big) |
The neutral tone, occurs on stressless syllables and has a pitch entirely determined by the tones of adjacent syllables. However, a neutral will never act as the starting tone. Neutral tones are usually unmarked. For example, the red parts of the following table are neutral tones.
| māma 妈妈 | yéye 爷爷 | nǎinai 奶奶 | bàba 爸爸 |
| gēge 哥哥 | wáwa 娃娃 | jiějie 姐姐 | mèimei 妹妹 |
| zhuōzi 桌子 | fángzi 房子 | běnzi 本子 | jìngzi 镜子 |
| jīnzi 金子 | yínzi 银子 | zǎoshang 早上 | dìshang 地上 |
| dīngzi 钉子 | miánhua 棉花 | yǐngzi 影子 | yànzi 燕子 |
(Source: www.chineselearner.com)