Would you be able to explain the difference between the:
Vs
How come the first case is reflected in PinYin and the second one is not?
Tone sandhi is systematic and global to Mandarin - it is based entirely on tone adjacencies, with 2 special cases of 不, 一. Word level tone changes like 朋友 are for the most part not systematic or predictable - they just have to be learned with each word separately. That’s the main reason. However, note that not every pinyin transcription follows that guideline - you will frequently see naive algorithms just output the reading of each individual character, writing 朋友 as péngyǒu
Tone sandhi can be thought of broader changes in tones related to the tones themselves or grammatical points. E.g., 3-3 going to 2-3 or differences in tones for 一 depending on its context.
Word-level changes are sort of more inherit to the word itself. Usually the changes are the “neutralization” of the second syllable in a two syllable word. These don’t really have a hard-and-fast rule like tone sandhi changes are.
In other words, tone sandhi changes are changes that can be thought in almost grammatical terms. My grammar book covers many of the tone-sandhi cases and how they relate to grammatical points. Word-level changes are not grammatical, but tied to the word itself.
In terms of the question about transcription of pinyin and how it relates to tone sandhi, we have this documentation article which may be of some help: Word tone sandhi | HanziHero Docs
Hope that helps!
Thanks for linking the docs! That’s exactly what I was looking for.
I was getting ready to make another post to ask if there was a way to add sandhi somehow, and I’m glad to know why it’s not currently there and that there is a thought to maybe have a cue or tooltip or something additional added to the UX so that we can know that, yes, there is sandhi at play, however, for your review, you should treat it without the sandhi.
— Question no. 1 --------
Hey just to confirm, the tone sandhi rules apply to any words next to each other, they dont need to be part of the same “word”, right?
So this sentence:
你喜欢吃披萨
nǐ xǐ huān chī pī sà
would be the following after the changes right?:
ní xǐ huān chī pī sà
— Question no. 2 -------
And how about two 3 tones across different sentences?
我很好。你吃饭吗？
Before sandhi:
wǒ hěn hǎo. nǐ chī fàn ma.
Would the HAO change to 2nd tone?
wó hěn háo. nǐ chī fàn ma.
— Question no. 3 -------
What happens to 3 or more 3rd tones
one after another?
我想买。
wǒ xiǎng mǎi
Correct, the sandhi rules are global, and not only limited to within a single multi-character word. Just try saying two third tones in a row - it’s awkward. Doesn’t matter if it’s across words or not (or even cross sentence if you’re speaking fast enough) it’s annoying to say so native speakers don’t ever do it.
I’m just going to just use tone numbers to make it easier to write. So you have 3x third tones in a row like 333 or 4x 3333 or even 33333 and you’re asking what happens? The “simply never wrong” approach is just to change all the early ones to 2 so you get 223 or 2223 and 22223. This works 100% of the time.
However depending on exact word boundaries etc it’s also acceptable to go 323 or 3223 or 32323 or 223223 etc. All of these follow the rule that you never actually say more than one third tone in a row, just depending on what feels more natural you’ll hear all of these at some point. It’s generally that the end of any “logical group” gets the 3rd tone, but what a “logical group” even is depends on the speaker and the sentence.
This comes directly back to “logical group” above. Generally the end of a sentence is the end of a logcial group so get’s the 3rd tone. In this example, without sandhi this would be 333.3145. I think people would generally say this as 223 <breath> 3145 as sort of two unconnected phrases with a break. But if you were saying it quick without any pause you’d probably just 2223145 or 3223145. I don’t think you’d ever give hen a 3rd because it’s not the end of any section - it’s the middle so always a 2 in basically all variations.
But honestly don’t worry this too much - once you’ve got enough input some combinations will just start “sounding right” and you won’t even think about it. But for now if you just stick to the “it’s all 2’s until the last 3” that always works.
Also worth reading the Chinese Grammar Wiki page about tone change rules here: Tone changes for third tones - Chinese Pronunciation Wiki