Checked tone 入聲 (入声)

rùshēng · from Chinese

What is a checked tone?

A checked tone is a short syllable ending abruptly in -p, -t, -k or a glottal stop; Middle Chinese called it 入聲, the entering tone.

Middle Chinese had four tone categories, one of which was the checked tone. Mandarin lost these final stops and redistributed the syllables among its four tones, but Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Shanghainese and Sino-Vietnamese readings keep them. That is why classical poems that rhyme in Cantonese often fail to rhyme in Mandarin.

Examples

一: Cantonese jat1, Hokkien it, Mandarin yī; 六: Cantonese luk6, Mandarin liù; 八: Cantonese baat3, Hakka bat, Mandarin bā

Kungfucius says: Mandarin threw away its final consonants; Cantonese kept the receipts.