Does TonePerfect check Mandarin tones?
Yes. TonePerfect scores the tone of every syllable you say in Mandarin Chinese, separately from the syllable's initial and final, so you see which syllable's tone slipped and which tone it heard instead.
Last checked
It works on single words, tone pairs and whole sentences, in the free browser tests and in the iOS, Android and web app. Items are written in dictionary pinyin, as textbooks do, and you say them the way they are spoken: third-tone sandhi (你好 nǐ hǎo is said ní hǎo) and the neutral tone are included, and the practice page scores any sentence you type, including ones with 不 and 一.
Because the tone is scored apart from the consonant and the vowel, a right tone on a wrong sound does not pull the tone score down, and you know whether to fix the pitch or the sound.
A tone score measures the tone you produced, not whether you can hear tones in someone else's speech. For listening practice, use the tone trainer below.
When a tone score is less reliable
- Background noise, music or other voices.
- A clipped start, when the recording begins after you have started speaking.
- Whispering, which has no voiced pitch to measure.
- Very creaky third tones, and neutral tones, which are short and take their pitch from the syllable before.
- Very fast connected speech, where syllables run into each other.
- If a result looks wrong, record again in a quiet room, close to the microphone.
What it does not do
- It does not score Cantonese, which is not one of its eight languages.