Characters that clearly have the wrong tone according to me!
When you're just starting out learning Mandarin coming from English (or other non-tonal languages), tones are hard because they're so new/different. But at a certain point you get used to it and then it's not really a thing anymore. Tones aren't really an issue for me anymore ... except when the tone is WRONG! And by "wrong" I mean "the tone doesn't match the characters meaning/definition" (according to a random white guy who doesn't live in China and is only HSK4 so clearly knows everything).
Characters with the "wrong" tone:
- 低 (dī) low: Low is literally the description of the 3rd tone ... and yet it is 1st tone which is the opposite of low.
- 上 (shàng) up: The tone goes DOWN, but the character means up/above? Clearly it should be 1st tone (even 2nd tone would be fine because that goes up).
- 慢 (màn) slow: You know what tone is described as being slow? 3rd. What about the fastest? 4th tone. How is the word for slow, the fastest tone?
- 短 (duǎn) short: Again, what's the shortest tone? 4th. Is 3rd tone in any way short? No it isn't.
- 深 (shēn) deep: 1st tone is HIGH, it is not DEEP in any way! 深 clearly should be 3rd tone ... 1st tone is just wrong!
- 浅 (qiǎn) shallow: Exact opposite to 深, why be shallow but have a deep tone?
- 升 (shēng) rise: It means to rise, yet doesn't even rise at all! Obviously should be 2nd tone (or at least 3rd).
Why can't all these characters just be like 高 (gāo) where the high meaning perfectly matches the high tone?
If you know of any more post them and I'll update the list! Once complete I'm sure in no time at all the whole native Mandarin speaking population will catch up on fix these glaring errors in tone vs definition miss match to make my life easier :P
(/s in case it wasn't obvious lol)