When we have two third tones together, the first one will change into the second tone in spoken. This change is happened naturelly when you speak them fluently. So the marks in the book are kept third tones. Such as ni3hao3, shui3guo3, lao3ban3, etc.

xiǎo jie (correct in northern China, especially in colloquial Mandarin, for example, Beijing dialect) <<< Highly doubt that. Unless you refer to its implied meaning: whore. I know what sir Yoshi means though, I won't suggest you to remember it. I never heard of xiao3 jie (neuter) during my 20 years life in formal speech. Only one correct, official pin yin: xiao3 jie3 Because that's the only pronunciation it got, both of the characters are not, as they call it - polyphone (multi-pronunciation character). It's a bit confusing that sometimes the falling-rising tone and the rising tone do indeed sound alike because when you read it fast or at the 'normal' speed, the falling part is easy to be weakly stressed. Just note that there is only one correct pin yin for that xiao3 jie3 and you can't pronounce jie with the neuter tone (it'll kind of make you look like a retard or you are trying to be funny).

【小姐 xiao3 jie3 】 is the correct pinyin. But do you feel its a little uncomfortable to read both words in 3 tone? So the tone of the first word changes in order to make the pronounce more coherent. Read it as 小姐 xiao2 jie3 write it as 小姐 xiao3 jie3

Seems you can't draw a universal conclusion about this: 耳朵 its spoken pin yin should be er3 duo(neuter), there's no denying of it and even southern Chinese speakers who don't speak with Mandarin accent well will admit it. 哪里, 打点, 小姐 belong to another topic. I've explained why they sound like 2, 3 sometimes in my previous posts. See this: http://dict.baidu.com/s?wd=%B6%FA%B6%E4&tn=dict

Sir, first choose a good, official dictionary, though most of them just copy each other. And you can't fully trust any cyber dictionary. http://dict.baidu.com/s?wd=%D0%A1%BD%E3 http://www.zdic.net/cd/ci/3/ZdicE5ZdicB0Zdic8F320122.htm I know where you got xiao3 jie though, @ such like chinese-tools.com But this is also true of 哪里 which I believe is pronounced na3li, but perhaps I am wrong about this also. I don't know what to think are these dictionaries wrong, or this a case of genuine disagreement among Chinese scholars? Well you are not a 'perhaps wrong'. One thing sure is that if you mark 哪里 na3 li and 小姐 xiao3 jie in a Chinese exam as the Chinese kids take as students at school, you'll absolutely get a beautiful red 'X'. A rule is that no matter what you pronounce the word in spoken Chinese, you must mark their pin yin all the same as their official one(s). Eg my name, the most simple character, 一, in fact has only one pin yin officially, despite its colloquial pronunciations. Yes, we have the only correct agreement about this case, on the contrary some Chinese scholars today are exactly the men who state their own 'thundering' points to stand out, attract others. As I said, the only one, correct one is xiao3 jie3, in any case. However, how you read it is another question, refers to spoken skills. That is to say, just make it sound natural and make it be able to be understood by others. Yes, sometimes we do say '哪里' 'na3 li (neuter)' and we actually don't care about the small difference that much.