The True Nature of Entering Tone as the Third Tone

The rhyme books for the Southern Opera written around the middle of Ming Dynasty were always following the old saying—entering the third tone—of Zhong Yuan Yin Yun.This agrees with the real singing rhymes used by the Southern Opera in Ming Dynasty.Wang Wenbi's the third tone in Zhong Yuan Yin Yun means is sung as rather than becomes.Such description cannot deny the existence of the entering tones in dialects.