Where do the tone marks go?

Even those familiar with pinyin are often uncertain about which in a string of vowels takes the tone mark. If, for example, you are given "ni3 hao3 huai4" -- is it (Answer: the first choice.)

Fortunately there are no ambiguities to worry about, even where there are several vowels in a row. Here are the rules:

• A and e trump all other vowels and always take the tone mark. There are no Mandarin syllables that contain both a and e.
• In the combination ou, o takes the mark.
• In all other cases, the final vowel takes the mark.

The possible vowel combinations are listed below, with the vowel that receives the tone marked as second tone.

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