title_body: How would one describe different tones on paper?
upvoted_answer: I think vowel + shift in tone is key. If you'd just have different tones (as in notes) for vowels, that would conflict with expressions of pain, surprise, etc. In Asian Philology, when we talk about "tones", we actually mean a change in pitch for a vowel. Chinese has 4: Same, Up, Down and Down+Up. Thai for example has more.
  
  Here's a grid of the most used tonal notation systems for Chinese:
  
  
  
  The most common in use today is Pinyin