MEI4

Mei4 is the pinyin representation of the Mandarin syllable mei in the fourth tone. In pinyin, tones are indicated either by diacritics (mèi) or, in teaching and lexical contexts, by a tone number appended to the syllable (Mei4). The fourth tone is a falling pitch.

The syllable mei4 can correspond to several different Chinese characters depending on context and meaning. The most common character read as mei4 is 妹, meaning “younger sister.” Other characters share the same pronunciation in the fourth tone, but they carry unrelated meanings. Because Chinese is a logographic language, the written character determines the meaning even when the pronunciation is mei4.

In usage, mei4 often appears as part of larger words or in names. As a standalone morpheme, its most frequent independent form is the noun 妹. In personal names and place names, mei4 may appear as a component whose tone is indicated by the chosen character, so the precise meaning varies with the character selected. In language learning and dictionaries, Mei4 serves as an example of a syllable with multiple possible characters that share the same pronunciation but different meanings.

See also: Pinyin, Mandarin Chinese pronunciation, Chinese characters, Chinese names.