Scholars from the Ministry of Education, the guardians of the Chinese language, have announced that a new tone will be added to Mandarin in time for the Beijing Olympics.

Li Yuming, a senior education official, said: "With the rapid cultural and social changes in recent years, as well as thriving new concepts in our daily lives, we felt that four tones were no longer sufficient. And the neutral tone has always been a bit of a 光棍."

The new tone joins the 1st tone (high, level, long), 2nd tone (high, rising, medium), 3rd tone (low, dipping, long), and 4th tone (loud, falling sharply, short). It will be denoted by a complex squiggle above the syllable.



"The sound is difficult to reproduce precisely in English," commented Mr Li with an evil chuckle. "Even Da Shan is going to struggle with this one".