numbers or tone marks?

[leosmith]

With pinyin, should I learn to read both numbers and tone marks? If not, which is better?

Thanks,

Leo

[葛亞輝（美國人）]

well...they're basically the same...I mean there are only 4 tone marks and 4 numbers, so it's not really going to take you any time to "learn" either system....basically the number just exist for systems that don't allow you to type with chinese tone marks...

[imron]

Most people I know seem to prefer the tone marks over the tone numbers. As the above poster mentioned, tone numbers are really only used because it's a pain to type the proper tone marks on a computer. You'd never really use them on paper or anything like that. Also, because there's a direct 1-1 mapping between tone marks and numbers, learning one pretty much means you've learnt the other.

[leosmith]

Thanks. Yeah, I guess I was sort of worried about nothing.

[Gulao]

Native Chinese speakers will tend not to think of tones in terms of numbers (at least they don't in my experience), but rather an abstract representation of the contours in their mind. As the markings reflect these closer, I'd go for learning the markers first, then learning the numbers. It's not so hard to get an idea of the numbers, you just need to memorize the contour of how they sound in order.

[HashiriKata]

Native Chinese speakers will tend not to think of tones in terms of numbers (at least they don't in my experience), but rather an abstract representation of the contours in their mind.

I'm not Chinese but I'm pretty sure no (ordinary) native Chinese speaker would think of tones through "an abstract representation of the contours in their mind". I think they'd think of tones and refer to them simply using conventional names (such as rù-sheng, shǎng-sheng,..? I'm not sure. Could some native speaker give the names they use for the 4 tones, please?)

[semantic nuance]

In Taiwan, informally, we simply say 輕聲(neutral) 一聲(1), 二聲(2), 三聲(3), and 四聲(4) to indicate the characters we use. For example, 這個字唸幾聲啊? 二聲還是三聲? (What tone is this character? 2nd or third?)

As ru4-sheng1, shang3 sheng1, etc, they are more formal terms when referring to grammar.

Hope it helps!

[Quest]

I don't think the terms yinping yangping shangsheng qusheng etc were taught (or emphasized to the degree that I'd remember) in elementary school when I went to school in China. We used 第一声，第二声，第三声，第四声，and 轻声。Without proper teaching though, native speakers don't even know their language has tones. I didn't know and couldn't count Cantonese tones until fairly recently.

[Gulao]

Without proper teaching though, native speakers don't even know their language has tones

This is really the phenomenon to which I am referring. The latent understanding of the difference between tones is not quantitative, but qualitative. In my experience, when asking a Chinese speaker about a tonal question, if it's not a character that's common enough to know off the bat, they'll sound out the syllable with tones they think it might be, and upon deciding the tone (and only then), will apply the numerical aspect to it.

This is why I think the markers are better first. It gives a somewhat less directly quantifiable aspect to the tone, so that one's thought process it quality before quantity.

[atitarev]

I find tone marks are much more nice looking and more intuitive but tone numbers are used when you can't reproduce the tone marks. I use tone marks a lot for reading and I keep marking characters with tone marks any time I am not sure about the tone (after looking it up).

As for tone marks and pinyin for native speakers I heard feedback from a Mandarin teacher in Australia. An amateur teacher but very enthusiastic. Since she is from Shanghai, her Mandarin is influenced by her regional dialect. The textbooks she uses for teaching have both Chinese characters and pinyin with tone marks. She said, seeing pinyin next to characters, helped to improve her pronunciation (which is OK in my opinion) because she is conscious of teaching the standard version of Putonghua but she is sometimes not 100% sure what tone to use or whether it is zi or zhi, si or shi, etc.

[daydreamer]

such as rù-sheng, shǎng-sheng,..? I'm not sure. Could some native speaker give the names they use for the 4 tones, please?)

We usually don't learn these names in primary school. But here in university, if your major is to do with Chinese language, usually we will call them "阴平(第一声)" "阳平(第二声)" "上shǎng 声(第三声)" "去声(第四声)"