Tone number

Tone numbers are numerical digits used like letters to mark the tones of a language. The number is usually placed after a romanized syllable. There is no particular correlation to the actual pitch of the tone. Tone numbers are only defined for a particular language, or for a family of languages that share a common ancestor that had the set of tones indicated by the numbers, which are shared by the descendant languages.

Other means of indicating tone in romanization include diacritics, tone letters, and orthographic changes to the consonants or vowels. For instance, in Mandarin, the syllable 馬 (which has a falling-rising tone) is represented in Wade-Giles romanization as ma3, with a tone number; in Hanyu Pinyin as mǎ, with a diacritic; and in Gwoyeu Romatzyh as maa, with a change in the vowel letter.

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