Look at the accents over the letters - à - the downward pointing accent is Tone 4 (falling) ǔ - the upside-down hat is Tone 3 (falling-rising) ī - the straight line is Tone 1 (flat/high level) ú - the rising line (left to right) is Tone 2 (rising/rising-high) Without any marking, the tone is neutral and not pronounced. Here is a diagram of the pitch of your voice in the tones, 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Pinyin_Tone_Chart.svg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

The mnemonic I used was that the number start with highest, and progress toward lowest. This made sense in my mind, but maybe it doesn't for others. So tone 1 is high level (1 - all high) Tone 2 is rising (2 - toward high) Tone 3 is falling rising (3 falling first - the first time it falls) Tone 4 is falling ( 4 - all falling) If it works to help you remember, great. There's not a lot to remember, but even now that I don't actively study Mandarin anymore, I remember this.

1 = --- 2 = / 3 = \ 4 = V

Pinyin is Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language, easy for foreigner to pounce, but not the same exactly sounds on standard Chinese. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin