Ningbonese Tones

How many tones does Ningbonese (Ningbo dialect) have?

This question is more complicated than it appears, and to explain why, one must go back to the history of tones in Chinese language:

In the beginning (Middle Chinese), there were four tones: level (平), rising (上), departing (去) and checked (入). Then, by Late Middle Chinese, however, each tone split into two, yin (阴) and yang (阳), according to whether the initial consonant is voiced or not.

Because the specific tone contour only depended on which of the four tones a word belongs to, along with the initial consonant, it could still be said that there are four tones, but 8 possible "tone contours". Wu Chinese, including Ningbo Dialect, preserves both the voiced and voiceless distinction as well as the yin and yang distinction -- so it could be said that there are four tones, but more possible tone contours.

So how many "tone contours" are there? First, of all, looking at single characters, according to online sources, the tones are as follows:

Tone name	Tone Contour	Example	English
阴平 yin level	53 High rising	刀 tau	knife
阳平 yang level	24 Mid rising	逃 dau	escape
阴上 yin rising	35 Mid rising	岛 tau	island
阳上 yang rising	213 Low rising	导 dau	lead
阴去 yin departing	44 Mid-high level	到 tau	arrive
阳去 yang departing	213 Low rising	道 dau	path
阴入 yin checked	55 High level	得 tah	get
阳入 yang checked	12 Low rising	达 dah	reach

Yang rising and yang departing have the same contour above; so, according to this table, for individual syllables, there may be seven tone contours. However, to my untrained ears, I can't tell the difference between several of them, so I can only distinguish 6 tone contours:

Tone contour	Examples
Falling	刀
Rising	逃岛导道
High	到
High with stop	得
Rising with stop	达

Wu Chinese also has Tone Sandhi, so the actual tone contour of a word depends on the words surrounding it -- and that's a topic for another post!