How does tone change between formal and informal Chinese

In formal Chinese, the tone tends to be more standard, clear, and conservative, maintaining canonical pitch contours and careful pronunciation, reflecting respect, politeness, and seriousness in communication. Informal Chinese, especially in spontaneous or casual speech, often shows more tonal variability, tone sandhi (changes in tone due to context), and relaxed articulation, which can deviate from the strict lexical tone patterns of formal speech. Informal speech may also include slang, colloquial expressions, and a more personal or intimate tone. The formal tone emphasizes clarity and structured communication, while the informal tone allows for more natural, dynamic, and context-dependent tonal changes that facilitate casual interaction and emotional expression. ^{6, 12, 18}

References

• The Concept of a National Idea in a Multicultural Media Space: Formal vs Informal Logics

• Formal vs. Informal CSR Strategies: Evidence from Italian Micro, Small, Medium-sized, and Large Firms

• Phonemic Differences in the McGurk Effect in Mandarin Chinese: An Exploration Based on Acoustic Features and Audiovisual Integration Mechanisms

• Lexical vs. Grammatical Tone: Sorting out the Differences

• Teachers’ Attitudes towards Teaching in Formal vs. Informal ELT Contexts

• Politeness and Speech Acts in Cross-Cultural YouTube Interview Discourse: A Comparative Study of Thai and Chinese Hosts and Guests

• A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF THE STYLISTIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN IN-COMING TRANSLATORS AND OUT-GOING TRANSLATORS FOR ENGLISH VERSIONS OF TIANWEN IN THE CONTEXT OF “TRANSLATING CHINA”

• Modal Markers in Chinese E-mails Produced by Students of Learning Chinese as Foreign Language

• Abstract B049: Building rapport in navigator-delivered health insurance literacy interventions: Engagement and tone used by parents of children with cancer and patient navigators

• The effect of language experience on lexical tone perception

• On the Representation of Tones in Oriental Languages

• A corpus-based investigation of pitch contours of monosyllabic words in conversational Taiwan Mandarin

• Phonetic Tonal Manifestations and Trends in Tone Change: A Case Study of the Yong-Deng Dialect in Northwest China

• LSICC: A Large Scale Informal Chinese Corpus

• he Matrix and Parameters of the “Jiugong-Modes” of the Chinese Basic Intonation

• A Sociophonetic Study of the Lexical Tones in Macau Mandarin

• On Grammar Functions of Tone Modification in Liangshan Yi Language

• Form and meaning co-determine the realization of tone in Taiwan Mandarin spontaneous speech: the case of Tone 3 sandhi

• Cultural and Social Interpretation of Chinese Addressing Strategies.

• Perception of Intonation on Neutral Tone in Mandarin