Tone name

In tonal languages, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use.

In contemporary standard Chinese (Mandarin), the tones are numbered from 1 to 4. They are descended from but not identical to the historical four tones of Middle Chinese, namely level (Chinese: 平; pinyin: píng), rising (上; shǎng), departing (去; qù), and entering (入; rù), each split into yin (陰; yīn) and yang (陽; yáng) registers, and the categories of high and low syllables.

Standard Vietnamese has six tones, known as ngang, sắc, huyền, hỏi, ngã, and nặng tones.

Thai has five phonemic tones: mid, low, falling, high and rising, sometimes referred to in older reference works as rectus, gravis, circumflexus, altus and demissus, respectively.^[2] The table shows an example of both the phonemic tones and their phonetic realization, in the IPA.

• Tone letter
• Tone number
• Archaic & modern four tones in Chinese