I see that this is listed with two fourth tones, and I'm wondering why this word doesn't follow tone sandhi rules. Anybody know why?

I'm not a Chinese expert but AFAIK 不 should be second tone. There's a little "feedback" link at the bottom right corner of the practice page, so you can send comments on specific characters and words to the Skritter gods.

James

Hmm. MDBG and nciku list this one as 2 fourths...

Yeah I noticed that it was listed in several places (yellowbridge too) as two fourths, which is why I didn't report this as a mistake. It seems to be a correct listing. I'm just wondering why it is behaving that way.

Many dictionaries obey the rule that tone sandhi isn't written, so maybe that's why the dictionaries have two fourth tones. (It's supposedly only "allowed" to write tone sandhi in educational materials, which of course includes Skritter.)

I've never heard of an exception to the 不 sandhi rule for specific words, have any of you guys?

James

Example sentences in nciku list it as 2nd then 4th, except when it's a complement, in which case it's neutral then 4th. Though nciku is not an authoritative source though, that's also how I'd expect it to work.

Yeah, this gave me a headache too. Dictionaries don't tend to indicate the sandhi for 不 and 一, but Skritter does. As a result of people adding vocabulary without knowing that (not that I'm talking about myself or anything...), there are some errors in the database. When you find them, just submit feedback, and it should be fixed right away.

BTW has your feedback on mistakes been getting sorted recently? I've sent a few reports of dodgy definitions and stuff without luck... Backlog?

I also haven’t received any reply for the 5 to 6 reports about spellings and tones that I submitted more that 2 weeks ago, nor have I seen the problems corrected. I’ve stopped sending any more report because of such a lack of response.

@pts That's funny, I submit corrections all the time and the Skritter guys usually fix them lickety-split. Maybe it's because Nick is on vacation?

James

@James It used to be, but no more recently. The last reply that I’ve received was on 27 Feb from Christopher Clark to a report that I’ve sent in about a week earlier. Around that time, apparently I sent in a report once every other day, and at least 3 to 4 reports sent in the week before the 27th remain unanswered. But Nick starts vacationing only 3 days ago.

Sorry for the delay guys, James is right that Nick normally handles the correction of tones, and he has been busy building the active pinyin practice as of late. As Scott and I are discovering, he not only handled the tone corrections but he was also the most active of us on the forums. With him gone Scott and I have been scrambling to keep up with e-mails and forum posts.

As for the definition corrections, we are still working out the kinks of getting reports to Christopher Clark and then getting them back to you guys. Sorry that we've been so unresponsive, I know that I personally do most of the stroke order corrections but because of hard drive problems last week I have been able to do any and will probably be unable to do any for the next week because I need Nick here tell me set up pygame game and get the chef running.

@Byzanti @pts, I'll make sure to respond personally to any corrections you guys make, so if you would like to send some more along please do so.

Ah I think we found at least part of the problem. Christopher Clark only gets emails that have been marked as "Reading or definition issue" for Chinese. If you submitted such a fix and didn't mark it as such, Chris didn't get it and the rest of us ignored it because we thought Chris got it.

I guess we'll have all Chinese feedback sent to him, and he'll have to filter it for such fixes himself. For the ones that we ignored thinking they were being handled, George will go back and fix.

Another problem: I had checked "Email replies to me" for this thread, but I didn't receive any emails.

James

Seems like the task queue responsible for sending out these emails isn't able to complete some requests, though we haven't been getting errors about it... I'll have a closer look!

Just in case it left anyone wondering, 不 is like 一, there is a proper way to say it, and then it's tone changes depending on the context. Its generally not too hard to pick up as usually the tone change makes it _easier_ to pronounce

ie yi2xia4 is easier to pronunce compared to yi1xia4
ie bu2xia4 is easier to pronounce compared to bu4xia4

(Well at least to my mouth/throat it is easier)

不下 is fixed. I've also just finished fixing all corrections that were pending (except those from shinyspoons--too many of them, I passed them off to Chris).

I also discovered this morning that I'd typo'd Chris's email and he wasn't getting any of the corrections. So. Sorry about that!

Here's a good explanation of tone sandhi rules for 一 and 不:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_phonology#Tone_sandhi