Tone Combinations Given that most words in Chinese are two characters, that means that when you are speaking, you are normally saying tones in combination. Since there are four tones that can start a word and five that can end it, that means there are 20 two tone combinations. Listen to the combinations below. For additional examples, watch (listen to) the videos below.
The following video is a playlist of 21 videos: one introduction followed by native Chinese speakers saying various words in each combination. If you want to listen to third tone followed by second tone, just scroll through and find that video.
Video Reference 高[gāo] tall 忙[máng] busy 好[hǎo] good 累[lèi] tired 真[zhēn] really 蛮[mán] quite 很[hěn] very 太[tài] too
*Two third tones in a row sounds like second third 太高 太忙 太好 太累 tài gāo tài máng tài hǎo tài lèi Neutral Tone – can only occur in the second character of a term. Particles are normally neutral tone.