The four tones of Pinyin: the first tone is represented by "ˉ", such as lā; the second tone is represented by "ˊ", such as lá; the third tone is represented by "ˇ", such as lǎ; The fourth tone is represented by "ˋ", such as là.

The flat tone, rising tone, and falling tone are collectively called the relaxing tone, while the entering tone is the urging tone. The ending of the relaxing rhyme ends with a vowel or nasal sound, and the ending of the expediting rhyme ends with a stop consonant. In addition to being a tone, the entering tone is also the collective name for a series of vowels ending in a stop consonant. Modern Mandarin has lost its entry tone. Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, Chinese has distinguished the yin and yang tones corresponding to the clear and voiced initial consonants on the basis of four tones to form eight tones, that is, four tones and eight tones.

Extended information:

The pitch of a tone is relative, and the absolute value of the pitch is not required. Because different people are different, the pitch of the voice does not require everyone to speak at the same high level. Women and children have shorter and smaller vocal cords than young men;

so the wavelength is shorter, and the pitch is inversely proportional to the wavelength, so the pitch of their voices is in most cases higher than that of young men; Furthermore, the changes in tone are sliding, not moving in leaps and bounds like from one scale to another.