Help required for improving pronunciation

[HashiriKata]

HK, can the poem be read in Vietnamese, can you post a Vietnamese version? Just curious about the sounds and traces.

Interesting idea but I'll need to do some work on it, so I'll have to see how I get on...

A step further with your idea, I wonder if any Korean speaker here who would read a few lines of the poem in Hanja? I could then myself try the Vietnamese and Japanese versions so that we can hear the poem in all 4 languages of the old "漢字圏".

[HashiriKata]

Well, I have no idea on the condition in Taibei, but in China mainland, 1~ 3 year old little babies are often taught to recite ‘Three Hundred Poems in Tang Dynasty 唐诗三百首’

I remember Semantic Nuance once gave us a link to a Taiwanese site called 唐詩三百首網路教學系統 (http://cls.admin.yzu.edu.tw/300/BIN/ti_brow.asp), which may be a similar idea. The site is unfortunately down at the moment, so I can't verify the contents.

[sjcma]

Well, I have no idea on the condition in Taibei, but in China mainland, 1~ 3 year old little babies are often taught to recite ‘Three Hundred Poems in Tang Dynasty 唐诗三百首’ as their enlightening education to train their sense of their mother tongue by their parents, especially in intellectual families, because these poems are well written with beautiful rhymes and easy enough for babies to read out loud, which are just the right points to help them practice the pronunciation. A lot of experts in early education say it helps young children to read (no matter to read out loud or to read in silence) more easily when they start to learn Chinese in primary school.

My kids (ages 4 and 2) know quite a number of Tang Dynasty poems as well as passages from the Three Character Classic (三字經). While Taibei is correct is saying that sound and tone is important to reading poetry, I think modern readings of these Tang Dynasty poems sound great in either Cantonese or Mandarin and follows very melodic rhyming patterns.

[strongneo]

Hi Quest and HK

I can help with Vietnamese version of this poem (長 恨 歌), normally there are 2 types of translation from Chinese to Vietnamese: translation to the ancient Vietnamese language (called Hán Việt - Han Viet, which heavily borrows from Mandarin and it is no longer used nowadays) and the other is translation to modern Vietnamese language.

The name of verse style, title and author of this poem (長 恨 歌) in Vietnamese

詩體: 七 言 古 詩 – Thất Ngôn Trường Thiên (That Ngon Truong Thien)

詩名: 長 恨 歌 – Trường Hận Ca (Truong Han Ca)

作者: 白 居 易 – Bạch Cư Dị (Bach Cu Di)

I will record the modern Vietnamese translation and post later with the Vietnamese translation script

.

[kudra]

a couple of comments on the adsotation of the selection from post #1.

If you cut and paste the passage into the advanced page, and adsotate there are a couple strange things. Admittedly, feeding tang shi into adso may be ill advised. But I just wanted a quick conversion to pinyin. Setting output to UTF8 simp which seems to work better yields --

1. 汉皇重色思 comes out as all 1 "word" 汉皇思重色. Notice the 思 has changed position! There is no english -- just the hanzi

2. 天生 gets stuck together, but with no gloss

3. 回眸一笑百媚生, here 百 gets pinyin of yibai, not bai

4. 恩泽 has no english

5. 日 gets translated as "Japan is". OK, adso is tuned for prose, not tang shi. no big deal.

6. 遊 doesn't get adsotated. It gets converted into 閬� if the output is set to guobiao. Don't know what's going on here.

If I choose pinyin, instead of adsotate, only the 1st line comes out.

If I also choose output as utf-8 simp then we get

hànhuángsī chóngsè qīng guó ， yù yǔ duōnián qiú bùdé ** DANGER **

yáng jiā yǒu nǚ chū cháng chéng ， yǎng zài shēn guī rén wèi shí

tiānshēng lí zhì nán zì qì ， yī cháo xuǎn zài jūn wáng cè

huímóu yī xiào yībǎi mèi shēng ， liù gōng fěndài wú yánsè ** DANGER **

chūn hán cì yù huá qīng chí ， wēnquán shuǐ huá xǐ níng zhī

shì ér fúqǐ jiāo wúlì ， shǐ shì xīn chéng ēnzé shí

yún bìn huā yán jīn bùyào ， fúróng zhàng nuǎn dù chūn xiāo

chūn xiāo kǔ duǎn rì gāo qǐ ， cóngcǐ jūn wáng bù zǎocháo

chéng huān shì yàn wú xiánxiá ， chūn cóng chūn 遊 yè zhuān yè

hòugōng jiālì sānqiān rén ， sānqiān chǒngài zài yīshēn。

again note that 思 si has changed position. hànhuángsī chóngsè qīng guó should be

hànhuáng chóngsè sī qīng guó .

Now for some questions.

In listening to semantic nuance, it sounded to me like 识 in 养在深闺人未识 was pronounced with 4th tone.

遊 has trouble converting, but if I put it into pleco with the handwriting recognition, it finds it in the unihan add-in. as you2, wander, roam, travel. Apparently the meaning of 旅游. There is probably an interesting reason that 游 is used in lvyou, where 遊 seems to have the more appropriate meaning.

So here is the adsotrans assisted pinyin of the passage, with the few hand corrections.

hànhuáng chóngsè sī qīng guó ， yù yǔ duōnián qiú bùdé

yáng jiā yǒu nǚ chū cháng chéng ， yǎng zài shēn guī rén wèi shí

tiānshēng lí zhì nán zì qì ， yī zhāo xuǎn zài jūn wáng cè

huímóu yī xiào bǎi mèi shēng ， liù gōng fěndài wú yánsè

chūn hán cì yù huá qīng chí ， wēnquán shuǐ huá xǐ níng zhī

shì ér fúqǐ jiāo wúlì ， shǐ shì xīn chéng ēnzé shí

yún bìn huā yán jīn bùyào ， fúróng zhàng nuǎn dù chūn xiāo

chūn xiāo kǔ duǎn rì gāo qǐ ， cóngcǐ jūn wáng bù zǎocháo

chéng huān shì yàn wú xiánxiá ， chūn cóng chūn yóu yè zhuān yè

hòugōng jiālì sānqiān rén ， sānqiān chǒngài zài yīshēn。

Now, there were a couple characters where semantic nuance used what againstwind called ancient. I guess ths is classical pronunciation. Can someone point this out?

I heard

(adsopinyin) -> semantic nuance

chong2se4 -> zhong4 se4

chang2cheng2 -> zhang3 cheng2

wei4 shi2 -> wei4 shi4

li2zhi4 -> li4 zhi3

yi1 chao2 -> yi4 zhao1 (this one I have a handle on, since here 朝 zhao means early morning, as in 一朝被蛇咬,十年怕井绳， think I read this in the HSK listening course book) So this is corrected in the pinyin above.

bai2 -> bo2

liu4 gong1 -> lu4 gong1

So before I memorize this, I would like someone to untangle the pronunciation ambiguities above. I don't mind using classical pronunciation if that is what is involved at some points, but I'd like to know that is what is going on.

Thanks.

[Jose]

Regarding your problems with 遊, this is a traditional character. In simplified Chinese it has been merged and replaced with 游. Note that in traditional characters, 游 is used in combinations that have the meaning of "swim, float", like 游泳, whereas 遊 is used with the meaning of "roam, wander" as in 旅遊.

I think it is not correct for a text in simplified characters to use 遊. My guess is that its appearance in the original text is probably the result of an automatic conversion from traditional characters.

[trevelyan]

Thank you the notes Kudra -- I'll fix the errors as I can and post a thread in the Adso forum detailing then. In the future can you post these sorts of things in the Adso forum... I don't check all of the threads and this would have slipped through. Someone sent a private email about it though.

[Janedcm]

very good!

It will be better if you could read the forth tone more strong ,

[kudra]

Thought I would submit to evaluation by (and humiliation at the hands of) our helpful critics. I have not memorized this passage. Doing so would probably make my reading smoother. Of course, probably what most people are interested in is pronunciation during spontaneous conversation(Since I am not podcasting in Chinese any time soon, you will have to use your imagination). Anyway, what with practicing it a bit, I may end up memorizing the passage, in which case I will submit another version just to see if it really is smoother.

A couple things – I based the pronunciation of 六宫 off of what I heard in semantic nuance’s recording, so I pronounced it lu4 gong1. Also, to my ear, she pronounces 百媚生 as bo3 mei4 sheng1, which I tried to pronounce bai3 mei4 sheng1. Perhaps someone could clarify this.

My gut feeling, which isn’t worth much, is that these may be differences between modern and archaic(perhaps there is a more appropriate term for this) pronunciations.

Also, to my ear she says 人未识 as ren2 wei4 shi4, but I tried to pronounce this as shi2. In this case I am just taking a chance in breaking with what I hear semantic nuance doing, and going with the dictionary pronunciation.

Given all that, to paraphrase the original poster, bring on the bitter medicine!

note: I shortened some of the pauses between lines using audacity to get the file under the limit for uploading, hence the file name changhenge6

kudra-changhenge6.mp3

[Koneko]

Good try!

I think your pace was a bit too fast for 長恨歌

Intonation... Well, I think your pitch was understandable but your stress was rather flat - I think you should focus on pronouncing some words (normally the first word in a sentence), more loudly or forcefully than those surrounding it in the same sentence.

Your tone is clear; just need to work on your stress.

K.

[HashiriKata]

You sound very good, Kudra! As I've come to expect from reading your posts, you've got the tones and pronunciation well under control, and I'm sure intonation and natural sounding will come with practice. A few months in China will see you flying with these. By the way, the last word should be read as "yìshēn" and not "yīshēn".

[kudra]

A few months in China will see you flying with these

There are 2 problems with that -- 1. I already lived in Taiwan, albeit 20+ years ago. So I'm rusty and I don't really have a feel for the "natural" rhythm in the poem. 2. "A few months in China" is not exactly compatible with job, kids, mortgage ... A lesson to you younger learners, do it while you can!

By the way, the last word should be read as "yìshēn" and not "yīshēn"

Drat!