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THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
tzŭ, a son, when used as a substantive indicator, and a few words in the second or third tone when used as finals, it is seldom safe to neglect tones numbers two or three. The few instances in which they can be ignored will be seen in the list of new characters following each sentence. Whenever no tone mark is attached to the phonetic rendering of any of these characters it may be taken for granted that the tone is not to be sounded.
It should be noted that when two words in the third tone come together the first almost always takes the second tone or the first.
