Every second-language student of Mandarin is told pretty quickly that yī (hanzi: 一) is subject to “tone sandhi”, meaning it changes tone depending on the tone of the following syllable*. HOWEVER, the founding rules of Pinyin say that the tone sandhi should not be marked and that you should continue to write yīgè, for example, even though it’s said “yígè.”
Sometimes this “rule” feels really awkward. In this comment on Beijing Sounds, Randy Alexander took me to task for writing bùshì (as the rules would have it) instead of búshì (as it’s pronounced).
He’s not the only one. Check out this page from my daughter’s new favorite book:
Here we have yígè, yìshēng, and yí going over to some word on the next page. All sandhi are marked.
Now before Pinyin.info takes me to task, let me note that the usage on the page above violates a much more important rule: i.e. that it sep ar ates each syl la ble instead of putting syllables together into words. Well, you can’t have everything, and anyway the use of Pinyin here is not so much as a script in itself as it is just a way to get kids past the characters they don’t know.
Still, does anyone know if this is going to become the new standard for Pinyin? Or is it just a single publisher’s idiosyncrasy?
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*Instantspeakchinese puts it succinctly (h/t Sinosplice, where John follows up with some other good comments on tones):
Rule 4: Rules concerning the word “yi.”
- “The word “yi” is 1st tone when used as part of a number (yi, er, san, … shiyi).
- The word “yi” is 4th tone when preceeding 1st, 2nd, or 3rd tones. (yi ge ren)
- The word “yi” is 2nd tone when proceeding a 4th tone.
For some reason that’s always been hard for me to incorporate into everyday speech, and I continue to make mistakes.
