It’s been some time since we talked about tones. In the past I’ve said that I see it as important to learn the tones in combination (though my preference is for meaningful examples, rather than disembodied morphemes). I’ve made other (sometimes controversial) statements on the subject of pronunciation and the tones, but now I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on a few questions concerning them:
How important is it to get them exactly right for communication?
Do native speakers ever get them wrong?
Can a foreigner really learn to speak without making tone mistakes?
Are certain tones/words/combinations more likely to cause problems for the learner than others? Which ones?
Any suggestions on how to learn/improve tones?
OK, Big Brain, let’s hear from you!
Ken Carroll
My thoughts, based on my own admittedly limited experience:
1. Maybe not exactly right, but close, and the need to be exact grows as you start trying to talk about more complex subjects. Once you start talking about abstract things, the number of homonyms for a given word that could possibly make sense in context goes way up.
2. Yes, they do. Children get them wrong all the time, but I guess that’s to be expected. My Japanese teacher (who grew up in Beijing) once pronounced a word with the wrong tone and only after getting a lot of confused looks from his pupils and explaining did everyone realize what he meant (this goes back to #1). Also, tones change a little from dialect to dialect (i.e., Taiwanese tend to pronounce the tone on the final character of words that are left unstressed on the mainland).
3. I don’t see why not, at least to the degree that native speakers can. I’ve met non-native English speakers that have full command of all of English’s inflections. I’m certainly not there yet, though
4. I have a really hard time with second tone. I just can’t make it right in sequence with other tones most of the time. 3-2 is particularly tricky.
5. I have made the most progress in learning tones by not learning tones, but rather trying to imitate the sounds that native speakers make when they pronounce words. This might seem like a trivial distinction, but I think that by thinking of tones more like we think of English word intonation (though a lot more complex) and not as a formula that needs to be learned the tones can be learned more quickly.
Great idea for a blog discussion. I’ve had some real life interaction with native Chinese speakers and based on my (unscientific) observations, whether they understand me seems to depend on a number of factors (proper tone pronunciation being only one factor).
If the native speaker knows me really well and is expecting me to speak Chinese, they can understand me, even if I screw up some tones. However, I have used the exact same sentence on native speakers who do not know me and they act as if I’m from another planet ! Then I will go back to my other Chinese friend (who knows me well) and repeat the phrase…and she says “that is perfect, no problems with tone / pronunciation…”
Needless to say, this leaves me scratching my head for an explanation. Has my good friend “adjusted their listening input” for me ? Or do Chinese people who are not close to me adjusting their listening to expect English and are completely caught off guard when I use Chinese ?
Overall, Chinese people have told me that tones are important but not the barrier that some people depict them as. Personally, I think that context over-rides minor tone mistakes. I’m told that even native speakers sometimes make tone mistakes, and they are still understood despite this. It is analogous to a non-native speaker who speaks English with a heavy accent. If one is patient, it is not impossible to decipher the meaning.
Tones are only one component of pronunciation. You need to look at Chinese pronunciation as a total package…Initial + Final + Tone. I think one can improve tones by practicing with John’s Mnadarin Tone Pair Drills or Chinesepod’s pinyin chart…but only use these tools as supplements to what is truly effective, and that is simply mimicking the total sound (much like how children learn proper pronunciation).
Hmmm the dreaded tones.
Are the tones needed for communication? I find this really depends on who your communicating with. I find that if the person knows that I’m learning Chinese I can get way with a lot. If I walk up to a complete stranger they tend to give me a funny look if I get something wrong. I hardly ever have a trouble where the people don’t understand me on a second repeat (unless what I’m saying is wrong in the first place). It’s been interesting making my review lessons in that as I’m watching what is being said I think I hear things that otherwise my mind would blank out (like Ken eating the microphone). But what’s really interesting is watching Jenny’s impeccable tones. In a Newbie lesson I could probably turn off the sound and write the tone for the word she is saying. Out side of Newbie it starts to become a different storey as they become less distinct.
Do people get the tones wrong? sure they also forget how to write words (it’s funny to see a note written by a Chinese with one word written in pinyin). It’s the same with English, even if people mispronounce a word you can contextually get what they meant to say and you brain seems to just fill in what you heard with the correct word.
Are certain tones/words/combinations more likely to cause problems for the learner than others? Which ones? I think it depends on where your from. I’ve had teachers mention that a lot of Australians have trouble with the 4th tone and South Africans with the 1st tone. I think the hardest thing for me to pronounce is ri 日though recently I’ve been told that seems to have fixed itself
Improving tones I must admit is difficult. Though I think songs and rhymes are good as you seem to use a different part of your brain when you sing. I had a couple of friends in high schools with stutters, one didn’t stutter at all when he sang and the other only stuttered when he spoke his native Thai but not when he spoke English. With this type of thing in mind I actually tried with my teacher in Taiwan to find a Chinese speech therapist to discover if there are any drills they use but alas we couldn’t find one and gave up on the idea.
Ken
Tones and pronunciation has been in my mind this week. If I had a choice I would so much wish to have proper pronuniciation. Although I am a bit confused as to how having (or is it not having) an accent in a second language enters into this as well. Speaking in Chinese on the phone to a stranger and they not knowing you are a Westerner. Perhaps impossible but I have met a few native born Chinese who can pull this off in English.
Last Saturday’s Show, the fill in male host, Beau seemed to speak Chinese very well. I believe his vocabulary is very limited but the accent seemed very Chinese. I suppose this may have something to do with his wanting to be an actor and being good at hearing spoken words and then mimicing them back spot on.
As to learning tones I agree it is much easier to have them somehow stick in the brain in contextual chunks. As an example today I was writing something to put as a question to Amber about the podcast and I wanted to make sure I was using 又 [yòu] properly. I turned to my Taiwanese salesman and asked him about 又 without the rest of the sentence and he was confused because asking him about it in English I turned 又 into 有 [yǒu]. And he said no not “have” It took me a second to understand what he was talking about. But I merely had spoken mostly English and was trying to ask by adding English inflection to 又 to make it a question. So of course it sounded like 3rd tone.
So I make no effort to memorize tones but merely hope they become ingrained in my speaking. It seems to work since a few friends will correct me if I am speaking to them in bits of Chinese if I hit one very wrong.
O my question back to you is how does accent or lack of one fit into pronunication and tones. Is it different aspect ?
Does Jenny speak with a different accent than the crystal clear way she speaks to us at the ELLE and Intermediate Levels when she is gossiping in the office?
Mike in Jubei
As much as I hate to admit it: Yes, you do need to care.
As both Paul and Charles pointed out, when the communication partner is a person close to you and you use a standard set of vocabulary you can get along fairly well with wrong tones. But on the other in those situations even barking and groaning might do. My wife understands our two-year old if he says “gou4 gou4″ for dog (instead of gou3gou). But she also understands him if he says “dou4 dou4″ to the same animal. Context and a limited vocab base do the job.
I ran into funny situations because of mispronouning tones, they inject another element of disambiguity into speach. In a noisy environment 向哪边 quickly turns into 想大便 if you neglect tones.
And whenever you want to use lower frequency vocab you get those dreaded bland looks if you do not pronounce them 百分之百 correct. Unfortunatelly you need lower frequency vocab to convey unexpected semantics, i.e. real information.
But nevertheless I do not despair. I strongly believe you do *not* need to move to ome kind of “remote mountain tone drilling monastary” and do not come back to learning the real stuff until you mimick the morphems perfectly. If it was that way I would be up there for the rest of my life.
Tones do get better over time if you try. “Wrong” tones do not “burn in” and have to “delearned” with tremendous effort. They much rather slowly evolve into the right ones (or at least to ones comfortably close to the right ones) - if you accept corrections and keep on trying. At least that is what I experienced so far, but my journey to tone-heaven is far from over.
As for my most feared opponent: third and second in a sequence. I always got ho hear “Your third tone is wrong”, but often the 3rd in isolation was Ok. Until I noticed it was the 2nd tone behind the 3rd that needed adjustment to make the 3rd sound correct. 2nd changes, it starts “higher”. Strange stuff.
Depends on your goals and what you’re trying to communicate. If your goal is high-level fluency, you can’t neglect the tones. If you’re just prepping for a two week trip to China, don’t sweat it.
Definitely.
Yes. (I think the real question is: is it worth all the effort?)
As the others have said, 3-2 is the hard one. I once ranked the tone combinations in order of difficulty. I’m not done there, though; my masters thesis research will be on exactly this topic.
Drills and practice will help, of course, but I think the single most important factor is the learner’s attitude. If the learner decides “tones aren’t really important” or “my tones are good enough,” they will not get better. Careful observation of native speakers’ speech and real self-criticism are both necessary to keep improving.
I haven’t joined to tone police force yet, but have gained much appreciation for the value of both tones AND pronuncuation. If your words are correctly spoken, but in the wrong sentence order, you are more tolerated and appreciated than the other way around.
Q: How important is it to get them exactly right for communication?
Not important at all. Even non-sympathetic listeners will have no problem understanding a non-native speaker given a context and a modicum of overall pronunciation accuracy. Ironically, if one worries overly about tones (or any other aspect of pronunciation) THAT in itself can negatively affect fluency and hence, communication.
Q: Do native speakers ever get them wrong?
That’s like asking if anyone anywhere gets native pronunciation wrong. Of course people make errors. I personally have many instances where I’ve guessed at the pronunciation of a word from my reading vocabulary only to mispronounce it in conversation. These problems are compounded in Chinese where one’s guesses are based on so much less since there’s no alphabet. However, if we’re talking about speaking vocabulary, I’d say there are almost never mistakes, in any language by native speakers, once one accounts for regional and idiolectal variations. [I’m sure the prescriptive grammarians and their pronunciation counterparts would heartily disagree; I think Cole Porter wouldn’t.]
Q: Can a foreigner really learn to speak without making tone mistakes?
If she starts before the age of puberty, yes. If after, unlikely to rarely.
Q: Are certain tones/words/combinations more likely to cause problems for the learner than others?
In my experiences as a student and as a teacher, most definitely.
Q: Which ones?
Again, as in any language, it’s usually the exceptions to the rules that cause problems, especially for those who think or worry about them too much. Examples include instances where tones of individual phonemes change, such as two third tones together, or 不 bù changing to bú when preceding a fourth tone.
The main problems and variations occur, however, at the phrase level. This is the place where one can’t really learn pronunciation; one can only hope to acquire it.
Q: Any suggestions on how to learn/improve tones?
If one wants to acquire a language, as opposed to learn it, one needs simply to get tons of comprehensible input from a variety of sources and speaker types. All matters of vocabulary, usage, grammar and yes, even pronunciation, will take care of themselves in due time.
There is no need to learn tones. Just copy what you hear exactly. ONE tone is impossible to learn anyway, you need to memorize the “melody” of the phrase.
With that in mind, I don’t care about tones and have no problems to communicate.
Certainly it’s possible to make yourself understood without tones, but you’ll sound like a jerk and people will have to work that much harder to understand you. Anyone serious about learning Chinese is going to have to face the tones sooner or later, and in my experience, very few people learn tones correctly when they’re first learning Chinese, meaning that at some point in the future they’ll have to go back and fix their pronunciation.
Native speakers do indeed get tones wrong, even when accounting for dialect/regional accent. I’ve heard a number of fairly well-educated native speakers say something with the wrong tone and then correct themselves.
Foreigners can learn the proper tones and tone sandhi, but as the Johns have pointed out, it takes time, effort, immersion, and more than a little bit of masochism. I know a few foreign speakers of Chinese who speak the language with native levels of fluency.
As for tone combinations — 3-2 is hard until you get the hang of it, though I think that the sandhi works slightly differently in the North than in the South. My own problems with tone production tend to occur more when I’m speaking rapidly than with any specific combinations.
As for improvement: a couple of years ago, I started to give myself ’speaking assignments’ where I had to talk in Chinese about what I’d done/seen/thought that day. I’d record these on my computer and listen to them - which was painful, let me tell you, but also helped make my pronunciation errors more readily apparent.
I entirely agree with John B’s point 5 and what Fox says about melody - just focus on the whole melodic pattern rather than individual tones (1st, 2nd etc.) per se. Incidentally, that goes for English (as a foreign language) and probably a few others too.
I just got back from China and my experience is that most people do not understand it when you get the tones wrong,I do better learning by simply listening each word rather than tone analyzing.
Brent
Brendan,
I tried your technique once…it is really revealing. But it was too scary for my poor tired heart to listen to that….
Goulnik and others say:
I entirely agree with John B’s point 5 and what Fox says about melody - just focus on the whole melodic pattern rather than individual tones (1st, 2nd etc.) per se.
I have to say that I disagree here, based on long experience with learning Cantonese, and now Mandarin, and how I have managed to learn things about Cantonese tones from consideration of Mandarin tones, etc. I also base it on long experience of listening to native English speakers try to learn Mandarin and non-Native English speakers speaking English, many after many years of exposure to English and learning of English.
The first, and biggest, problem is that people naturally import assumptions from their native language into their second language, especially if they are outside of the normal age range when their brains are plastic enough to adapt.
Some of these assumptions are so deeply ingrained in them that they cannot, without electric shock therapy, change them, at least for some people.
They start with assuming that the phonology of English is the same as other languages, and the sound ranges are the same, which they demonstrably are not. The more subtle problems are that Chinese has very precise sylables, unlike English, where we run sylables into each other and change the length of sylables according to need, emphasis, intonation etc.
However, tones are perhaps the biggest problem I see. For example, in Cantonese, if you want to say 釣魚 (fishing) but are not careful with your tones, you could end up saying 屌魚, which has an entirely other meaning and the difference is only one tone (diu3 vs diu2). Of course, this same risk exists in Mandarin (diao4 vs diao3).
And then there are the tone shift rules in Mandarin. Most of the people in my class have not yet mastered the third-tone before third-tone production rules, let alone the half-third-tone production. This, despite the fact that many of them have had musical training (and I know that at least one of them plays an instrument).
In my view, the best way to work on these problems is to have sets of two or three sylable words or phrases with tone shifts in them and practice them over and over until you can reliably produce them and recognize them.
I have imported some of Ken’s questions from an earlier incarnation of this thread:
To me, using pronunciation as the primary teaching strategy poses some serious questions. Is it really necessary to spend long hours working on pronunciation when you could be communicating?
Have you ever had the experience of talking to someone who has a non-familiar accent? Perhaps it was a person from India, or a Chinese speaker who had not spent enough time learning to speak English properly.
How long did it take for your ear/brain to sync up to their way of speaking? How many mistakes in communication were caused because they did not speak in one of the more standard English styles you are familiar with? My wife, who is a native speaker of Cantonese, hates it when she is on the phone with some customer support person who is from India, because of the difficulties in communication.
So, in my view, it is a matter of respect for your interlocutors for you to try to speak their language well, but it is more practical than that. If you don’t want to be misunderstood, speak their language well. Pronunciation mistakes are more fatal than gramatical mistakes, in my view.
Pronunciation drills don’t require any thinking.
Learning the multiplication tables does not require any thinking, but it is essential to mastery of many concepts in math(s). For example, you cannot easily factor numbers (small ones, like say, 56) if you do not know you multiplication tables, nor can you solve quadratics like x^2 + 12x + 35 if you cannot quickly come up with two numbers with a sum of 12 and a product of 35.
Can there be learning without thinking?
Very much so. How long did you think about how to ride a bicycle before you managed to learn? I imagine that you watched some people do it, then got on the bike, perhaps fell off a few times, but with some practice, you finally got it, and there was actually very little thinking involved.
Our brains are actually giant pattern recognition machines. The reason for learning the multiplication tables (by heart) is that that enables you to do all those math problems that teachers of old liked to set, which then enabled your brain to build up patterns so you could, without thinking, recognize which rule or approach applies in which situation.
The same applies to tone drills of the right kind. After sufficient practice, your brain knows the patterns and can automatically apply them. Well, at least for some of us.
Rather than having the learner of Chinese adapt to the unique demands of the language (ie tones, which in my opinion are completely unreasonable), why not have the Chinese language adapt to the needs of the foreign language learners ? Eliminate some of the grammar and pronunciation rules that make Chinese so difficult to acquire. For example, modify Chinese so that it turns into a stress language, much like English, where individual syllables are stressed. A much more efficient and simpler system without a doubt. And get rid of some of those insane consonant-vowel combinations. Who the heck puts a “z” in front of an “h” ? I would like to meet the moron who invented that and give him a stern tongue-lashing (in English) about some of the fundamental mistakes that were made when the language was invented. And who decided that some Chinese syllables merit a 4th tone while others warrant a 2nd tone, for example. I can never find any logical, scientific explanation for why some words should be pronounced in one tone versus another. I asked some Chinese friends about this and all they come up as a response is “Jesus is responsible, ask him”. Well, if languages can be invented, then they can also be “re-invented”…let the revolution begin !
When I first tried to learn Mandarin in the 1970s my professor insisted on drilling tones into us and I remember futile struggles trying to put my tongue exactly where she said it had to go. Needless to say I learned nothing.
This time around I decided to learn the way children learn languages and as Ken sometimes says to “sing” it. My language partners — native Chinese — say my tones are fine and my pronunciation clear. So it seems to be working.
A Chinese friend who has a doctorate from an American university and has been in the United States was talking to me over dinner in English about a friend of hers. I was startled to hear her refer to her friend as “a freakin American.” It took awhile to understand she was talking about an African American friend. That is after 17 years living in the states and being fluent enough to earn a doctorate.
It goes both ways, I guess.
Let me expand on not learning tones:
Learning each tone for a word is simple not really possible. You will get stuck in forming a phrase. Starting with a phrase in mind and then put the melody in is easier and natural.
Of course I use tones, but subconscious. Maybe some subconsciously wrong. Never mind. I don’t bother too much. China is full of people with bad Mandarin, and 40% speak no mandarin at all.
It’s the same in English. We use tones all the time. We speak a word in a certain way, and not in another way. Same thing, it comes out subconsciously right.
Therefore, I agree with Ken that you need to listen to the melody.
And one more point: Going to a “classroom” Mandarin school and do the first week tones, and only tones, and more tones is the perfect way to kill all motivation forever. After the 3rd week the student is convinced (s)he can’t learn tones, and therefore can’t learn the language.
Fox says:
It’s the same in English. We use tones all the time. We speak a word in a certain way, and not in another way. Same thing, it comes out subconsciously right.
Yes, but in English you are not going to be saying 屌魚 when you mean to say 釣魚.
I see this problem in my formal classes every day. The 老師 is very tollerant, but still there are times when she simply cannot understand what students are saying.
Here is a wacky approach to tone drilling. Anthony Kuhn from NPR has been collecting audio samples of Hawker’s Cry from old Beijing. Doing Hawker’s Voice impressions can be a fun way to practice tones.
http://www.npr.org/templates/s.....Id=5402696
Have fun!
GALS - Okay I heard all the guys talk, but what do the gal’s think?
Cause whether in English or Chinese they seem to alway say to me, “It’s not what you said, but your TONE.”
Fox: I’ve been going to Chinese classes at the Uni for 2 and a half years now even though we were really focused on tones and correct prounciation for at least a month when I started. Yeah, it was hard, but I still liked it. I guess it depends on the motivation of the student and the skills of the teacher.
Clever Dick: Are you joking?
And just a side note, there is not a single native Finnish speaker who would not be able to pronounce a word they have never heard, because Finnish is such a simple language to pronounce. Everything is written (almost) exactly as it should be said
I think we just have to accept that Chinese is difficult and we can’t get rid of tones. All we can do is practice. If you want to become fluent you have to work for it and stop being lazy. You can’t make the tones go away by saying they are not important
-Kaixin
For me awareness and paying attention all the time are important, the ability to speak and discern tones just improves gradually.
Don’t ask somebody the tones of the new word they told you, ask them to confirm what you think they are.
Be attentive when you are listening, guess tones all the time even when you know you will be told them.
Listen a lot to men, women and Children that will quickly cure you of any misconceptions that tones are based on any absolute scale (freaky children cartoon voices start of sounding entirely in first tone :)).
If you hear a new word and are trying to check it in a electronic dictionary then specify the tones as well when you add the pinyin (ok you might have to take more stabs at trying to find an appropriate word but you will get better).
When you get some proficiency learn not to think about about tones (I can only do this face to face at the moment on Skype I still have a tendancy to self-correct, oten I got it right at first and then correct wrongly). For some reason talking face to face is a lot easier for me, so if you are like me then don’t sweat it too much if Skype or phone conversations are not what you expect of your ability.
As for native speakers, well some use different tones for the same words anyway (depending where they come from and even gender age etc.). Many Chinese people who can speak and hear third and second tone, often seem to make a mistake when they think about it and have to say the word in their head or out loud again to tell you the tone.
Somebody kindly talked me through a complicated sentance, at three different speeds and explained her interpretation of what she did with the tones. At the fastest speed only the first character of multi character words got a proper tone, other characters either became no-tone or a softer less stressed version of the original tone (to be honest I found it almost impossible at the moment to distinguish this difference but for some words it seemed to be important). A rare word that could be confused in the sentance got a little more space and the tones were still stressed.
It is a long long journey and I don’t even know how much further I have to go or am even able to go but I think paying attention with a little light drilling occaisionally will do far more over time than sweating through reams of drills.
I think the tone problem comes partly from the focus on Pinyin. People look at the letters, but can’t grasp the tone marks as they are very alien. Whereas in an audio approach, like in CPod you focus on what you hear (at least those which just listen and didn’t sign up the written material)
But maybe I am just a little more focussed on tone copying, as this is the only way to handle Cantonese.
I like the idea of going for the melody.
I think that Pinyin can sometimes be an impediment to English speakers’ getting tones right. We remember the pinyin because it’s easiest for us to remember, but the pinyin doesn’t include tone data. I don’t think we really remember the little squiggly line over the vowel.
I believe that it is Princeton that teaches a system of Romanization that includes the tone in the spelling of the word. I imagine it’s a pain for people who learn that to be exposed to standard Pinyin, but I’ve always wondered if learning through such a system would help better integrate tones into one’s learning and memory.
Just realized that Fox said something similar. I agree that the audio approach is a *great* way to deal with tones. Pinyin–or any other Romanization system–gives a false sense of confidence.
>I think that Pinyin can sometimes be an impediment to English speakers’ getting tones right.
First time somebody told me “learning Mandarin speech only and not the characters is more difficult” - I thought - Crazy!!
But now I can see that it is easier to remember a sound with a character, means, with no association to a romanized script.
It’s even more difficult with Cantonese, which I believe is impossible to learn from a book. And worst, the Pinyin is still commonly known in China, but Yale, Lau or Yutpin are completely unknown outside the classroom - and even more worst, 99% of Canto speakers have no ideas that their language has tones. Not, that is much easier with Mandarin.
For me yes learn through your ears, but to answer the above few comments.
1. I never bother with tone marks, silly waste of time from my point of view, pinyin is just a tool why not use the numbers jiu3 shi4 wo3de kan4fa3 (easy to remember, easier to type, although of course much less prestigous and you don’t get to spend ages disscussing keyboard layouts and character sets on forums :)).
2. Pinyin is a tool, and I found it vital. You can hear a word on a TV program, type it into a program and find out what it means. It is not a full writing system. Seems to work, not hard to learn, why is there always so much discussion about alternative systems? baffles me seems to be a lot of energy wasted on “learning Chinese in a not learning Chinese” kind of manner. Bottom line is most people I talk to are from Mainland China, they know pinyin, i’d be stupid to waste time on anything else.
3. Yes associating sound with character is good for reading but which way around. I would humbly suggest you learn to read what you can already understand (via your ears) and never the other way around. Learning against the natural flow character->meaning->sound-> ting1de dong3 (sorry that just seemed more natural than the English :)), would for me at least result in stifled reading and listening.
I know almost nothing about Cantonese of course!
Re: “Just copy what you hear exactly … memorize the ‘melody’ of the phrase.”
I like this idea in concept, but all my attempts with it fail. I am jealous of those it works for. My mind automatically goes concerto instead: weaves a different, countering-tune into the original.
I think the effectiveness of this approach depends on how one’s brain is wired. I’m left sweating and toiling with other painful means, because I can’t sing the tune.
Richard, thanks for the NPR link to The Lost Sounds of Old Beijing.
When I lived in Shihlin, north of Taipei many years ago, I was very fond of the street criers- my favorite sound was the watermelon man’s cry. The vegetable seller came by on a bycycle cart and played the sugar cane flute. Thanks.
There are forum threads all over the internet with students talking about how they were either told by their teachers to “ignore tones for now” or “don’t worry, native speakers will understand you by context”. And, of course, some simply decided on their own that tones weren’t important enough to focus on. They all seem to conclude the same two things.
1.Not focusing on tones was a big mistake
2.Undoing the bad habits they developed proved difficult.
A very common comment posters make is “In class everyone understood me. When I went to China no one understood me.” I won’t challenge the statements of some on this blog, I don’t profess to be the world’s expert, but from my own personal experience I can say I’ve tried to be diligent about tones from the beginning and even with that focus I have some difficulty being understood. I know it would have been much worse without the tone discipline. As far as context goes I think for listeners to be able to deduce what you’re saying from context requires you to already have a rich foundation of vocabulary and grammatical structure. How many elementary and even intermediate students have that sort of foundation? Also, I think those who are learning from within China might want to consider that those of us outside China (I would think the vast majority) don’t have the constant exposure to native speakers so for us it’s extra important to get it as right as possible. I also strongly agree with the poster who basically said you should show native speakers due respect for their language by doing your best to get it right. And why not!
“ignore tones for now”
I agree here. You need to develop a feel for the language first. Then the sound becomes more natural. So if you listen to radio or TV, just listen for words you can pick up, it just trains the ear and brain.
“don’t worry, native speakers will understand you by context”
True, up to a certain complexity which you will reach soon.
I suggest to listen a lot to get a feel for the flow of the language. Never mind you don’t understand most.
TONE LOC - I wonder these days where in my speech is the nexus between accent and tones. When is tone problem really an accent problem?
I disagree with many of the posters that say they’ve encountered many non-native speakers of English which you couldn’t identify as such on the phone, I think they are very few. (Although I never knew that Peter Jennings was a CANADIAN!) I find that most non-native (85% plus) English speakers retain accents.
However, accents from English speakers do vary A LOT. I have less trouble with understanding Spanish-background speakers and European speakers. I totally don’t understand some Irish or British speakers. I’m always going, “Sorry, say that again.”
Is it just that in English we say ‘people have accents’ and in Chinese we are more inclined to say it’s a ‘tone’ problem, when it’s not always the case.
If the goal is to sound fluent and native-like, then I think people need to work on both tone AND accents AND vocabulary.
I agree with Prez Life.
It’s really difficult to refrain the occidental stress (final, tonic, exclamation, interrogation, etc..) during the replication of the chinese melody.
But a have a personal technique.
I try to reproduce the chinese melody and get all the 4th tones right according to a gender technique of memorization.
I separate and memorize the Hanzi in two groups :
- 1st, 2nd and 3nd tones as feminine
- 4th tone as masculine
I could make a neutral gender like in German but I prefer to keep it closer to the french way.
It’s not perfect but I avoid most of the possible confusions.
Problem: the 不 variation is my enemy
Advantage: I don’t have to think of the 3nd tone variations
Lantian says:
However, accents from English speakers do vary A LOT. I have less trouble with understanding Spanish-background speakers and European speakers. I totally don’t understand some Irish or British speakers. I’m always going, “Sorry, say that again.”
I come from a non-rhotic community of English speakers (not the UK) and we insert empenthentic ‘r’ and so on. See non-Rhotic etc
However, I have tried for most of my life to have a neutral accent, and now that I live in California, I am capable of pronouncing words (subconsciously even) the way Californians do, but I have not yet lost my non-rhotic ways
I can identify and understand speakers of English from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Ireland (thick, thick accents there), India and parts of the US, but that is because I have listened to many speakers over the years.
My take on accents in China is that there are shifts in pronunctiation as well, so words like 心 are pronounced more like xing1 than xin1 (Jenny, does, for example). So, I imagine accents relate more to differences in pronunciation than tones.
Ken,
I think your questions regarding tones touches on one of the most fundamental concepts regarding acquiring fluency in Mandarin Chinese. I was “made in Taiwan”, but raised in the United States and retain a low elementary level of fluency in Mandarin Chinese. As I read through this thread, I kept thinking of the following example to illustrate the importance of getting the tones correct when communicating in Chinese: if you say, “I placed the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble,” it means the same as “I placed the EM-phasis on the wrong SYL-lable” albeit pronounced incorrectly. In Mandarin Chinese, however, if you use the wrong tone, the word most certainly could be misunderstood because it has a different meaning altogether e.g. horse vs. mom. So, my opinion is that if one wishes to be “fluent” in Mandarin Chinese, one ought to get the tones down correctly. Thought I would throw my 2¢ in : )
But surely correct pronounciation is more than tones alone. One of the things that I don’t get is how Chinese speakers make sense of the lyrics of Chinese songs where -I think- most of the tones are wrong.
But surely correct pronounciation is more than tones alone. One of the things that I don’t get is how Chinese speakers make sense of the lyrics of Chinese songs where -I think- most of the tones are wrong.
Have you ever listened to an English (or your native language) song and not understood some of the lyrics?
Understanding songs takes training, and some times, a gander at the printed lyrics.
I had tremendous troubles with hearing and reproducing tones until i realised that tones are only a “helper” to direct you how to say the word. For example some times fourth tone is really sharp in other words, and less sharp in others. And that is the difference between not being or being understood (on the street)
All these people saying don’t worry about tones too much conjure up images of my chinese classes where classmates are having full conversations in mostly toneless pinyin and I would have no idea what the heck they are talking about (Simply due to the lack of tones), it is like they are learning another language!!
Thanks, C-Pod.
Lots of interesting comments. This thread is very timely. I have recently begun to converse with and discuss my Chinese study with a native Chinese speaker while we both ride public transportation to work. She worked as a reporter for a Chinese newspaper before coming to the United States, so she knows a little about her native language.
We have a question.
I commented to her that I didn’t understand why the change of tones (3rd-3rd) is taught long before the half third tone. When a teacher pronounces a stand-alone character, the “ideal” third tone is used. In my (limited) observations, the ideal third tone is never used in real speech. Right after using the ideal third tone to pronounce the character, a teacher pronounces the example phrase, but uses a half third tone, or a changed third tone (to second tone). I think that should be identified immediately (that is, never tell me it’s a certain tone, then pronounce it differently without explaining it). My new friend wondered the same thing.
Gary says:
Right after using the ideal third tone to pronounce the character, a teacher pronounces the example phrase, but uses a half third tone, or a changed third tone (to second tone). I think that should be identified immediately (that is, never tell me it’s a certain tone, then pronounce it differently without explaining it). My new friend wondered the same thing.
Indeed. Most of the people in my formal class do not pronounce third tone correctly because they are always trying to pronounce a full third tone and not the half-third tone that is normally produced.
This thread demonstrates that we all have different learning styles. I am (overly) analytical. I believe it isn’t proper pinyin if it doesn’t indicate the tone. I can “get by” without knowing how to pronounce the names of Chinese politicians, sports stars, etc., which I see in English language newspapers, but I consider correct pronunciation a common courtesy (especially with names). And, of course, I haven’t a chance in **** of looking up the characters for those names without knowing the tones.
“Melody” is crucial, but the only way I can remember the “melody” is by writing the pinyin. Since “pinyin” used here doesn’t have any tones identified, the pronunciation is unspecified, so it might mean something other than I intend. Fortunately, in my limited vocabulary, there is no ambiguity, so I can get by without the tones. That works with an incorrect pronunciation, too; it is only understood in unambiguous situations (such as common classroom vocabulary or enough fluency on the part of the listener to follow the context and eliminate any ambiguity). If I mispronounce it, I’m lucky if it’s understood.
I DO believe that a lot of listening (ideally in China) is the best way to train yourself in correct pronunciation. I haven’t had that luxury so far, but matching up the pinyin tones is the only way I can prove to myself that I am hearing what I think I’m hearing (and remember it). Hopefully, I am remedying that lack of listening practice, thanks to the MP-san1 audio lessons on C-Pod.
P.S. When I started learning Mandarin, I started using numerals to represent the tones, with “5″ representing an uninflected character (so I knew it was knowingly marked uninflected rather than just being unknown). I later found Dr. Tim (Tianwei) Xie4’s Word macro to switch back and forth between the numerals and the actual accented characters (pinyin). It was on his web site, now learningchineseonline.net.
Hopefully, I am remedying that lack of listening practice, thanks to the MP-san1 audio lessons on C-Pod.
>I DO believe that a lot of listening (ideally in China) is the best way to train yourself
100% agree. But you don’t have to be in China. Ever tried emule or youtube for chinese TV stuff?
Do a search for “快乐驿站”. It’s a short, clear voice, standard mandarin comic. With subtitles. Language used is clear and quite easy.
BTW, if it ain’t fun you won’t learn anything.
Can you give a pointer to 快乐驿站 please?
sure, go to www.Youtube.com and paste “快乐驿站” into the search field. That will give you 17 hits, that will will keep you busy for some time.
Much better for Chinese Audio and TV stuff is www.verycd.com , however, youtube is perfectly OK for those short animations.
＞ how Chinese speakers make sense of the lyrics of Chinese songs
＞ where -I think- most of the tones are wrong.
That is the biggest mystery to me in Mandarin. If words are simple enough(e.g.我爱你,不要离开我), you could easily catch them all. But if complicated, I imagine that it might be way difficult even for native Chinese speakers to get them exactly.
I guess that would be one of the reasons why music TV shows are always broadcast with subtitle lyrics in China. Of course, you have a similar problem when listening to western opera. But I am sure that catching Chinese lyrics is more difficult.
Yes tones matter — no question. If you don’t use the right tones, you sound like nails on a chalkboard, or worse, you just aren’t understood.
When I first started learning Chinese, I spent an hour a week reading pinyin with a native speaker and being continually corrected on my pronunciation (did that for a few months). Tonal mistakes are often connected to other pronunciation issues, so it’s best to read complete phrases and dialgoues (even if you don’t completely understand them).
It’s not that hard to get it right. I would highly recommend doing this if you are just starting out and you want to speak proper Manadarin.
I think there comes a point when you have to let the individual tones go a little bit in order to focus more on fluency. That’s why you need to always work on tones in a context — either in combinations or in phrases.
Regarding the ideal (or full) 3rd tone as someone mentioned, I struggled with that myself until I came across the FSI and MIT Chinese courses which both describe the 3rd tone as the “low” tone. At first I thought they were nuts, especially after all I had read/heard on the falling/rising nature of 3rd tone, but then I tried treating it as a low tone and incredibly my speech was much more intelligible.
Hey, here’s a question to ponder - Given the Chinese language is thousands of years old why hasn’t someone figured out yet the best way to teach it???
Classical Chinese (Hanwen, Wenyan) might have been 2 thousand years old, but the present form of Standard Modern Chinese (Xiandai Hanyu or Zhongwen) as written and spoken national standard only came into existence for less than 100 years ago. The present tone system was codified by Zhao Yuanren in an effort to construct an idealized standard. It is rumored that his first draft of standard chinese, a fusion of northern and southern dialect, was so complex that no one apart from himself could speak the dialect.
Tone 3 is low when spoken quickly sounds like (11), but when it is drawn out, it sounds more like (113), rather than (213) according to Zhao’s system. The Zhao’s notation represents pitch with number 1-5, signifying the first 5 pitches of the whole tone scale, as in C, D, E, F#, G#.
So tone contours do vary according to syllable length, stress and tone sindhi. This is something you have to learn by ear rather than relying on textbooks.
So tone contours do vary according to syllable length, stress and tone sindhi. This is something you have to learn by ear rather than relying on textbooks.
Sandhi, perhaps?
It should also be noted that different people have different natural voice pitches, and these differ with time of the year. For example, male voice pitch is different from female voice pitch, and yet we have to understand each other.
What our brains then need to concentrate on are the things that are important, like the difference between the starting and ending pitch of each sylable in an utterance.
So, as long as pitch is going up, it looks like second tone. As long as it is high-level (for that speaker), it looks like first tone, as long as pitch starts high and falls, it is fourth tone.
Concentrate on what makes them distinguishable. I used to find it hard to distinguish and reliably produce sixth tone in Cantonese, especially from fourth tone, but these considerations made it much easier. Now I can say 無間道 in Cantonese or Mandarin