The Sound System: all 10 lessons free
No sign-up needed, but nothing is saved. Sign up free and your progress and mistake book are kept — carry on from any phone or computer.
This practice works best alongside a lesson: to get your sounds right, book one and your teacher listens and corrects you one-on-one.
What Is Your Name?
你叫什么名字？
Five lessons in, you can order, bargain and point at things — but you still cannot say who you are. Today you can, in your own Chinese name.
Sign up free — just an email. Your wrong answers go into your mistake book, and you can carry on on another device.
Sign up / sign inPronunciation clinic
The fifth tone that is not a tone: 轻声
You have been saying it for five lessons. 什么 is not shén-me with two full tones — the 么 is light, short, and has no tone of its own. Same in 谢谢 xièxie, 名字 míngzi, 朋友 péngyou. That is 轻声 qīngshēng, the neutral tone. Nobody taught it to you because you copied it correctly by ear. Now it has a name: when a syllable is written without a tone mark, do not perform it — drop it, quick and soft, and lean on the syllable before it.
这个音你已经说了五节课了。什么不是 shén-me 两个饱满的声调——「么」是轻的、短的、没有自己的声调。谢谢 xièxie、名字 míngzi、朋友 péngyou 都一样。这叫轻声。没人教过你，是因为你靠耳朵就模仿对了。现在它有名字了：拼音上没有声调符号的那个字，别去「演」它——轻轻带过，把重量压在前一个字上。
Hear the light one — the second syllable does less work
Listen for how the second syllable gets shorter and softer, never louder.
Tap any line to hear it
The question, and the answer, and the question back
Three lines. With these you can start a conversation with any Chinese speaker alive.
Tap any line to hear it
Pronunciation clinic
哪 nǎ and 那 nà — one tone apart, and it matters
哪 nǎ dips down and comes back up: which? 那 nà drops straight off the cliff: that. 你是哪国人？= which country are you from. 那是什么？= what is that. Same two letters, and the tone is the only thing telling them apart. This is why we drill tones: not to sound nice, but because the tone IS the word.
哪 nǎ 先降后升，是「哪一个」；那 nà 直接往下掉，是「那个」。你是哪国人？＝你是哪个国家的人。那是什么？＝那个东西是什么。两个字拼音字母一模一样，只有声调不同。我们练声调不是为了好听，是因为声调本身就是这个字。
Say them next to each other
Third tone bends. Fourth tone falls. Do them back to back until your mouth feels the difference.
Tap any line to hear it
Where you are from
Add 人 rén to a country and you get a person from there: 美国 + 人 = 美国人.
Tap any line to hear it
And how old you are — the numbers are back
You counted to fifty in lesson 3 at the market. Same numbers, new job.
Tap any line to hear it
Listen and look — 他是哪国人？随堂小练
No pressure — just making it stick.
Look at the flag, listen to the question, then answer.
Look at the flag, listen to the question, then answer.
Look at the flag, listen to the question, then answer.
哪
which
Someone you just met says this to you. What do you say back?
Say it out loud — the microphone is listening随堂小练
No pressure — just making it stick.
Your turn — say it
你叫什么名字？
What is your name?
Your turn — say it
我叫马可。
My name is …
Your turn — say it
很高兴认识你。
Nice to meet you.
Before you go课后回顾
- Say your whole introduction out loud with the pinyin switched off. If you stall on one line, that is the line to practise — not the whole thing.
- 哪 or 那? Ask me which country I am from, then point at something and ask what it is. Two sentences, one tone apart.
- Record your introduction on your phone and send it to me before next class. I will tell you which sound to fix first.