Question regarding tone

[sushiyehua]

As a person who is very nit-picky about tones, I have just come to realize words with two characters have neutral tone for the second character. I'm not talking about words that end with 子 (such as 孩子, 盘子, etc)... So for example, just to pick out some easy examples:

 

The reading in parenthesis is the readings set according to the dictionary.

 

学生(xué sheng): If I read the characters individually, it would be xué shēng.

商量(shāng liang): These separately would be shāng and liàng (also can be read as liáng "to measure").

胳膊(gē bo): Separately read: gē bó

 

My question is in these cases, is it wrong to say the words with the original tone the second character is assigned? So would saying xué shēng be incorrect?

 

My guess is that either way can be said. However that is just my guts, and I am not a certified Mandarin teacher to make this assumption. Besides the words like 东西 where pronouncing it as dōngxī would mean "east and west" as opposed to dōngxi would simply mean "things," I think pronouncing the second character with the original tone would be okay. Any disagreements?

 

 

 

[dwq]

现代汉语词典 distinguish between (A) words that are only pronounced with the neutral tone and (B) words that are usually pronounced with the neutral tone but can be pronounced with the original tone as well.

It marks (A) with a preceding middle dot and no tone mark on the neutral tone character, and (B) with a preceding middle dot and the character's original tone mark on the neutral tone character.

The three words you gave are all (A), they must be pronounced with the neutral tone, if you are taking a Putonghua exam at least. I suspect real life a a bit more forgiving but as a learner you probably should stick to the textbook for this.

Some examples of (B) would be 打算、道理、父亲.

[dwq]

You probably know this already, but I'd just mention that words' pronunciations change in compounds too, for example while the 生 in 学生 must be pronounced with the neutral tone, in 学生会 or 大学生 it must be pronounced with its original (first) tone.

[dwq]

商量(shāng liang): These separately would be shāng and liàng (also can be read as liáng "to measure").

Actually, I believe liáng should be the correct original tone, if it follows Cantonese. This wouldn't matter except if you want to say for example 有商有量.

[Tiana]

To me, whether the second character in some words should or should not be acceptable in its original tone is simply a matter of familiarity:  native speakers judge whether particular tendencies in pronouncing words is acceptable or not depending on how often they hear them from other native speakers (especially from speaker circles they identify themselves with or aspire to). The more familiar the forms are, the more acceptable they become. Learners will therefore just have to learn these tendencies, almost on a case by case basis.

[lechuan]

You will also find this varies somewhat on the region of the speaker. Taiwan Mandarin tends to have a lot less neutral tones, for example.

[arreke]

My question is in these cases, is it wrong to say the words with the original tone the second character is assigned? So would saying xué shēng be incorrect?

According to what laoshi says in the following video, we should remember this kind of words with neutral tone and pronounce them in the right way :

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzE5MzI4MjM2.html

[ablindwatchmaker]

My approach has always been to pay attention to the sound of words in sentences and occasionally glance at the pinyin. For instance, I had never noticed those rules pertaining to some of the characters you posted, but I pronounce all of them correctly.