bù, bùshì, etc is spelt bú… doesn’t seem too important but thought it should be mentioned
For which course are you referring to? Maybe the mod can take a look. As for the problem, 不 is one of those interesting characters that changes it’s tone, specifically when followed by a fourth tone.
So your 不是 would be pronounced bu2 shi4
You can see more here Tone changes
For your course, it could be that both options are allowed as an answer (bu4 shi4) and (bu2 shi4), though the second is correct. If the character 不 by itself is shown as (bu2), then that would be incorrect.
thank you for your response. I have only recently started and thus may not be getting something. To be more specific i found that in the course Mandarin Chinese 1 in lesson 3 have you eaten it was spelt bú2shì4 and in lesson 5 being human it was spelt bú2duì4. So could it be that it is more to help pronunciation? Also in lessons 7 and 9 food alcohol was spelt jǐu3 when apparently it was supposed to be spelt jiǔ3. I am truly enjoying this app as it has greatly helped me in learning Chinese.
Ps.
Did you mean the second one or the second tone is correct?
Hey @benkruse1979, no problem at all. For your first question, both 不是 and 不对 would be 2nd 4th. 不 switches to a 2nd tone when directly followed by a fourth tone. So (bu2 shi4) would be correct. It’s how it is pronounced in that situation. Is (bu4 shi4) correct also? I would say either of these is a technicality, but it would depend on what the course is looking for. Just remember that 不 switches to 2nd.
As for the accent mark over the i or u for jiu, it goes over the second vowel, so jiǔ. I haven’t used the official courses, but if they’re making you type the accent mark, that’s no fun, and accent mark + the number following is just asking for mistakes. But I digress, here’s a quote from the pinyin wiki on tone placement:
Rules for tone placement
Don’t beat yourself up too much about that though, the important part is remember which tone to use, not as much where the mark goes. The tone mark you’ll mostly only see when learning.
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Yeah, it’s a bit annoying when switching learning resources.
Some like Memrise spell according to actual pronunciation, and some according to pinyin rules (I understand that by pinyin rules you write the canonical tone always the same, even when it changes in actual speech).
That includes the changes with 不, with two consecutive third tones, with repeating characters (妈妈), and giving tone marks to some neutral ones, as far as I’ve seen.
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