When a character to be read with a rising tone is preceded by a character that would be read with dark level tone, light level tone, departing tone, or neutral tone, that is to say, whenever such a character is found before any character that is not read with rising tone, the normally-expected rise in tone at the tail-end of the rising tone from 1 to 4 in the last half is eliminated. The tonal value changes from 214 into a half rising tone tonal value of 2 11. This is expressed in written form as a change from 214 to 211.