"neutral tone" meaning in English

See neutral tone in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: neutral tones [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} neutral tone (plural neutral tones)
  1. (Chinese phonetics) The lack of one of the four primary phonetic tones of Chinese, sometimes viewed as a tone in its own right. The neutral tone is unmarked in Hanyu Pinyin. Tags: Chinese Translations (Translations): 輕聲 /轻声 (qīngshēng) (Chinese), tom neutro [masculine] (Portuguese)

Inflected forms

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "neutral tones",
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  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
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      "expansion": "neutral tone (plural neutral tones)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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          "orig": "en:Chinese phonetics",
          "parents": [],
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        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The lack of one of the four primary phonetic tones of Chinese, sometimes viewed as a tone in its own right. The neutral tone is unmarked in Hanyu Pinyin."
      ],
      "id": "en-neutral_tone-en-noun-BJZeVxNY",
      "links": [
        [
          "Chinese",
          "Chinese"
        ],
        [
          "phonetics",
          "phonetics"
        ],
        [
          "tone",
          "tone"
        ],
        [
          "Hanyu Pinyin",
          "Hanyu Pinyin"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Chinese phonetics) The lack of one of the four primary phonetic tones of Chinese, sometimes viewed as a tone in its own right. The neutral tone is unmarked in Hanyu Pinyin."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Chinese"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "human-sciences",
        "linguistics",
        "phonetics",
        "phonology",
        "sciences"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "zh",
          "lang": "Chinese",
          "roman": "qīngshēng",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "word": "輕聲 /轻声"
        },
        {
          "code": "pt",
          "lang": "Portuguese",
          "sense": "Translations",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "tom neutro"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "neutral tone"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "neutral tones",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "neutral tone (plural neutral tones)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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        "Pages with entries",
        "Terms with Chinese translations",
        "Terms with Portuguese translations",
        "Translation table header lacks gloss",
        "en:Chinese phonetics"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The lack of one of the four primary phonetic tones of Chinese, sometimes viewed as a tone in its own right. The neutral tone is unmarked in Hanyu Pinyin."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Chinese",
          "Chinese"
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          "tone"
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Chinese phonetics) The lack of one of the four primary phonetic tones of Chinese, sometimes viewed as a tone in its own right. The neutral tone is unmarked in Hanyu Pinyin."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Chinese"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "human-sciences",
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        "phonetics",
        "phonology",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "zh",
      "lang": "Chinese",
      "roman": "qīngshēng",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "word": "輕聲 /轻声"
    },
    {
      "code": "pt",
      "lang": "Portuguese",
      "sense": "Translations",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "tom neutro"
    }
  ],
  "word": "neutral tone"
}

Download raw JSONL data for neutral tone meaning in English (1.4kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-06-18 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-06-01 using wiktextract (074e7de and f1c2b61). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.