Why are some poems said to be in oblique tones when the first two tones are? Isn't it said that the first two tones in modern Chinese are flat, and the third and fourth tones are oblique?

To distinguish between flat and oblique tones, you first need to know the four tones. The four tones are the four tones of the ancient Chinese language. The so-called tones refer to the height, elevation, and length of speech.

The tones of ancient Chinese are divided into four tones, namely, Ping, Shang, Zha, and Jin. "Ping" refers to the flat tone of the four tones, including the yinping and yangping tones, while "oblique" refers to the oblique tone of the four tones, including the up, down and in tones. According to the tradition, PingSheng is a flat tone, ShangSheng is an ascending tone, DeSheng is a descending tone, and EnterSheng is a short tone. The Jade Key Song of Ming Dynasty's Shih Vacuum said:

"PingSheng is flat, and there is nothing low,

ShangSheng is fierce and strong,

DeSheng is distinctly mournful and faraway,

EnterSheng is short and urgent to collect."

Simply put, the key to distinguishing between flat and narrow is "either flat or narrow".

Modern Chinese

In modern Chinese, the four tones are divided into yinping, yangping, shangsheng and deheng.

Anciently, the tone of ping was divided into yinping and yangping, known as the first and second tones, in modern Chinese.

Anciently, the tones of Shangsheng became partly De-sheng and partly Shangsheng in modern Chinese. The upper tone is the third tone of the modern Chinese juxtaposition.

Anciently, the tone de-sheng was still de-sheng, the fourth tone, in modern Chinese.

The ancient incoming tone no longer exists in modern Chinese; it has been changed to the yinping, yangping, supersonic, and declension tones.

The table of the four tones in modern Chinese is as follows:

Yinping, Yangping, Shang, Deheng

First tone, second tone, third tone, fourth tone

For example:

Ma, Ma, Ma, Cursing

(yinping) (yangping) (Shang) (Deheng)

Simply put, among the four tones of modern Chinese, the first and the second tones are flat tones; The third and fourth tones are oblique tones.

Nine tones in Cantonese

The four tones of "平, 上, 去, 入" still exist in modern Cantonese and are subdivided into nine tones, namely "阴平" (yinping), "阴上" (yinshang), "阴去" (yinzhong), "阳平" (yangping), "阳上" (yangshang), "yangzhong" (yangzhong), "yinzhong" (yinzhong), "chongzhong" (chongzhong) and "yangzhong" (yangzhong).

The table of the nine tones in Cantonese is as follows:

Yin

Yang

Yin, Zhong, Yang

Ping, Shang, Go, Ping, Shang, Go, In, In, In

si1, si2, si3, si4, si5, si6, si7, si8, si9

Poetry, history, test, time, city, affairs, color, tin, and food

Of the nine tones in Cantonese, the first two and the fourth tones (yinping and yangping) are flat. The first four tones (yinping and yangping) are level, while the other seven tones (上, 去, and 入) are oblique.

When you look up a dictionary in the future (e.g., the Business Dictionary), just look at the number (usually in the upper-right corner) of 1-9 in the notation, and you'll know whether it's a flat or an oblique tone.

Afterword:

Ancient people chanted poems and made pairs according to the ancient sound, when reading ancient couplets with the modern sound, it is easy to misunderstand that the ancient people's level and oblique do not fit the couplet. For example, "Suck in the river water to cook new tea; sell all the green mountains as a painting screen."

In Mandarin,

Sucking in river water to cook new tea;

Ping Ping Ping, uneven Ping Ping

Selling all the green mountains as a painting screen.

Nonleveling and leveling

According to the ancient four tones, it is,

Sucking in the water of the river to cook new tea;

Nonleveling and leveling

Selling all the green mountains as a painting screen.

Non leveling

From the above arrangement of leveling and narrowing, using the ancient sound is in line with the law of the union, while using the modern sound is not (at least the end of the sentence on the narrowing of the lower level of the iron law are not consistent). Therefore, when we talk about the level and oblique in the future, first of all, we have to understand whether the creator is based on the ancient sound, the present sound, or the local dialect; otherwise, we will make a joke.

The four tones of the Chinese language

The four tones of the Chinese language refer to the four tones of the ancient Chinese language. If we want to know the four tones, we must first know how the tones are composed. So let's start with the tones.

Tones, which characterize the Chinese language (as well as some other languages). The height, elevation, and length of speech constitute the tones of the Chinese language, and height and elevation are the main factors. In Mandarin, there are four tones: yinping is a high flat tone (no rise, no fall, called flat); yangping is a middle rising tone (no rise, no fall, called middle); shangsheng is a low rising tone (sometimes a low flat tone); and dosheng is a high falling tone.

Ancient Chinese also had four tones, but they were not exactly the same kinds of tones as in Mandarin today. The four tones in ancient times were:

(1) Ping tone. This tone was divided into yinping and yangping in later generations.

(2) Upper tone. This tone became partly de-vocalized in later generations.

(3) Desheng. This tone remains de-vocalized in future generations.

(4) The incoming tone. This tone is a short tone. In modern times, the incoming tone is still preserved in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi and Jiangxi. There are also many places in the north (e.g. Shanxi, Inner Mongolia) that preserve the incoming tone.

In Hunan, the entering tone is not short anymore, but the tone category of entering tone is also preserved. In most of the northern and most of the southwestern spoken languages, the incoming tone has disappeared. In the north, some of the incoming characters become yinping, some become yangping, some become supersonic, and some become declension. As far as Mandarin is concerned, the largest number of insheng characters become de-sheng, followed by yangping, and the smallest number become supersheng. In the southwestern dialects (from Hunan to Yunnan), all incoming characters become yangping.

What was the shape of the four tones in the ancient times, it is not possible to know in detail now. According to the tradition, ping-sheng should be a center-flat tone, shang-sheng should be a rising tone, and de-sheng should be a descending tone.

The incoming tone should be a short tone. The front of the Kangxi Dictionary contains a song called "The Method of Dividing the Four Tones": the flat tones are not low, the upper tones are high and strong,

the deuterostrophic tones are clear and far away,

and the incoming tones are short and sparse.

This description is not scientific enough, but it does give us an idea of the four tones in ancient times.

The relationship between the four tones and rhyme is very close. In rhyme books, words with different tones cannot be considered to be in the same rhyme. In poetry, words with different tones generally cannot rhyme.

What words belong to what tones is clear in the rhyming books. In today's Chinese dialects, which still preserve the incoming tones, it is also quite clear that a certain character belongs to a certain tone. We should pay particular attention to the case of two readings of a character. Sometimes a character has two meanings (often with different word forms) and two pronunciations. For example, the word "for", used as "because" or "in order to", is pronounced in the declined tone. In ancient Chinese, this was much more common than in modern Chinese. Here are some examples:

Ride, flat, verb, to ride a horse; declined, noun, to ride a soldier.

Thinking, plain, verb, to think; declined, noun, thought, love still.

Honor, plain, verb, praise; declined, noun, reputation.

Dirt, plain, adjective, filth; declined, verb, open dirt.

Counting, supravocal, verb, to count; declined, noun, number, fate; incipient (pronounced as shuo), adjective, frequent.

Teach, declined tone, noun, indoctrinate, educate; plain tone, verb, make, let.

Order, declination, noun, command; plain, verb, make, let.

Forbid, declension, noun, ban, palace ban; plain, verb, kan, withstand.

Kill, incipient, transitive verb, to kill; declined (pronounced as sun), intransitive verb, to decline.

Some words, originally pronounced in the flat tone, became de-vocalized, but the meaning lexical properties remained the same. The characters "望", "汉" and "看" all belong to this category. The words "望" and "叹" were already pronounced in the Tang poems, while the word "看" was always pronounced in the declined tone. There are also more complicated cases: for example, the word "过" is sometimes used as a verb, but when it is used as a noun and interpreted as a fault, it can only be read in the declined tone.

The identification of the four tones is the basis for identifying the level and the oblique. In the following section, we will discuss the issue of leveling and narrowing.

Ping and narrow

When you know what the four tones are, you can understand the level and narrow. Ping and oblique is a term used in poetic meter: poets categorize the four tones into two main groups: flat, which is the level tone, and oblique, which is the three tones that go up to the top. The term "oblique" is literally translated as "uneven". What makes the two categories flat and oblique? The reason is that the flat tones are long and have no rise and fall, while the other three tones are short and have rise and fall (the entry tones may also be slightly rising or falling), so that they form two major types. If these two types of tones are interspersed in the poems, then the tones can be diversified instead of being monotonous. Although there are many things to be said for what the ancients called "resonant tones", the harmonization of the tones is one of the most important factors.

How are the tones intertwined in poetry? We can summarize it in two sentences:

(1) The level and oblique are alternating in this sentence;

(2) The level and oblique are opposing in the opposite sentence. This rule of flatness and narrowness is particularly evident in metered verse.

For example, the fifth and sixth lines of Chairman Mao's poem "The Long March": the waters of Jinsha lapping at the cloudy cliffs are warm, and the Dadu Bridge is cold across the iron rope.

The level and oblique tones of these two lines are: flat | oblique | flat | oblique, oblique | flat | oblique | flat. In the case of this line, there is one rhythm for every two characters. In the flat starting line, Pingping is followed by 仄仄, 仄仄 is followed by Pingping, and the last one is 仄仄 again. In the sentence that begins with "oblique", "oblique" is followed by "flat", "flat" is followed by "oblique", and the last one is "flat" again. This is alternation. In terms of pairs of lines, "Jinsha" versus "Dadu" is Pingping versus Oblique, "ShuiPai" versus "QiaoHeng" is The phrase "cloudy cliff" versus "iron rope" is flat versus oblique, and the phrase "warm" versus "cold" is oblique versus flat. and "warm" against "cold" is oblique. This is the opposite.

The rules of poetry and poetry will be discussed in detail in the following sections. For now, let's talk about how we can recognize flat and oblique. If you speak a dialect that has an initial consonant (for example, if you are from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, or Shanxi, Hunan, or South China), then the problem is easy to solve. In those dialects that do, there are more than four tones, and not only are there yin and yang for the flat tones, but also for the upper tones, the lower tones, and the incoming tones, which are often divided into yin and yang as well. In Guangzhou, for example, there are three different types of incoming tones. This is easy to do: just combine them, for example, combine yinping and yangping into flat tones, and combine yinshang, yangshang, yinyin go, yang go, yinyin enter, yang enter into oblique tones, and that's it. The problem is that you have to find out how many tones you have in your own dialect. This is where you need to get help from a friend who knows the tones. If you've already learned the correspondence between local tones and Mandarin tones in language class, and you've already figured out the tones in your own dialect, that's even better.

If you are from Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, and northern Guangxi, then the incoming tones are categorized as yangping in your dialect. In this way, you should pay special attention when you encounter Yangping characters, some of which belonged to the incoming sound in ancient times. As for which characters belong to the incoming sound and which ones belong to the yangping, you will have to check the dictionary or rhyme book.

If you're from the north, then the way to recognize the level is a little different than in Hubei, for example. In ancient times, since most of the incoming characters in Mandarin have become de-voiced, the de-voiced characters are also oblique; and some of them have become up-voiced, the up-voiced characters are also oblique. Therefore, the characters that change from 入 to 去 and from 入 to 上 do not prevent us from recognizing the level; only the characters that change from 入 to 平 (yinping and yangping) cause difficulties in recognizing the level. When we come across a place where the poem's meter specifies the use of oblique tones, and the poet uses a word that reads as flat today, causing us to wonder, we can look up a dictionary or rhyme book to solve the problem.

Note that any character that rhymes with -n or -ng will not be an incoming character. If we look at Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and northern Guangxi, the rhymes ai, ei, ao and ou basically don't have an incoming sound either.

In short, the question of the incoming sound is the only obstacle to recognizing the level and oblique. This obstacle can only be eliminated by looking up a dictionary or a rhyme book; however, the reasoning behind level and oblique is well understood. Moreover, about half of China still retains the incoming sounds, and people in those places have even less problem identifying the level and oblique.

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