I don't hear tones in Chinese movies

[hwangd01]

I am teaching myself Mandarin for fun. I am of Korean background, so the concept of tones is foreign to me. I am pretty anal about learning the tones with new characters, so that I remember it properly.

Anyways, I have been watching Chinese Mandarin-language films (the usual Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Jia Zhangke stuff) and have been listening for words that I know. I hear them said by the actors but they don't use the tones that I have learned. It is really different from teach-yourself CDs and tapes. In fact, most of the lines seem non-tonal but the actors would throw in a tone here and there. I'm sure native speakers understand everything perfectly, but as a newbie, I find this perplexing. I've been conditioned to think of tones as essential in eliminating ambiguity, since Mandarin is so full of homophones.

Also, how do people convey tones in song? I don't see how they could, except maybe in stylized music such as Peking Opera. Do the words ever get ambiguous, even for the native speakers?

-Perplexed newbie

[<<恒心>>]

hwand01:

Hmmm, interesting question. I don't have an easy explanation for not hearing tones in movies, except to speculate a bit... Some of the big name movie stars such as 周润发 are not native Mandarin speakers, but are native Cantonese speakers and have to memorize the Mandarin pronunciation of their lines. They tend to do a pretty good job of that, though, so I hate to say it but the problem probably lies with your perception... Take heart though-- learning Chinese humbles *everybody* and reveals *all* weaknesses!

As for the tones in songs question, this puzzled me too when I first started studying Chinese. My aunt is Chinese (Beijing) and I asked her about it, and it never even occured to her to be problematic, so I guess it's just something you learn... On the other hand, once I got to China myself I found that every single music video *always* has subtitles with the song lyrics. Further, I went to a couple 京剧 and 昆曲 performances and was struck by the electronic LED billboards by the sides of the stage with the characters scrolling along there...

So I think that the lyrics tend to be pretty straightforward *and* the lyrics are subtitled in videos and even live performance. Of course, having lyrics everywhere helps students like us a lot...

Ok, just for fun you can check out this video by 王力宏 called “在梅边" that incorporates a little dialogue from the 昆曲 opera 牡丹亭. Interestingly, 柳梦美's lines are *not* captioned! He just repeates the same line, though, and if you listen close, you should be able to hear his tones...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXo-gbnd5Hk

[yonglin]

On songs, someone posted this paper before in another thread: http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/chan9/articles/bls13.htm

It's a bit technical, but the conclusion is that (modern) songs in Mandarin are written without consideration of the tones in the language (as opposed to Cantonese).

[-葛亚辉-]

learning Chinese humbles *everybody* and reveals *all* weaknesses!

可不是吗！

[<<恒心>>]

地球人都知道！

Hmmm, that's an interesting article, but it's mainly on Cantonese-- the lone Mandarin example is "Happy Birthday"!! Modern Mandarin music!!?? I need to think about that a bit...

[kudra]

The Links to Love on Tones, and also this post discuss neutralization of tones, and the issue of tone in songs.

[Lu]

I think they speak with tones allright, but you don't hear them as you've only just begun studying Chinese. People on CDs and tapes for people to learn the language will speak very clear, very standard and very slow. People in real life (and in movies) will not. They slur, speak non-standard, speak really fast, and also the tones are not as clear as on your tapes, which is why I think you're not hearing them. Just keep listening to both tapes and movies, and keep studying, and you'll start hearing the tones.

Good luck!

[Hero Doug]

When I first started learning Chinese I had a few "discussions" with a few native speakers about the use of tones. They basically told me that I just couldn't hear them and they were using them. I listened intently but just couldn't hear them and would always bother them saying stuff like their just trying to throw a wrench in my studies.

Now I hear them when listening to Native speakers. I don't hear them all, but I do notice some scattered throughout the sentence. I think they thing is that their just so subtle in fluent speech their really hard to notice; and really annoying because we learn to say them in such an exaggerated manner that's never used in fluent speech.

As for the songs', I've wondered that same thing myself.

[lao daiwei]

I've been watching TV programmes on CCTV and Phoenix, I have noticed a lot of speakers who sound as though they don't use tones. This includes TV presenters.

The reason I watch is not because I understand, but to try and persuade my brain to hear all of the chinese characters. Chinese people seem to talk at about 7 characters per second, but my brain won't go faster than 5 at the moment.

Since I couldn't rely on what I thought I heard, I resorted to technology to tell me.

Using WASP from UCL (University College London) I can display the pitch track for some recorded speech and compare it with the nominal tones.

My first attachment is of han jia on happychina CCTV4 speaking at half her normal speed. The only anomaly seems to be "ming" which is falling rather than rising. I think, like lots of chinese, she pronounces it as mi'ng and its the ng that is falling.

my second attachment is of da shan on TIC CCTV9. Even though he is talking at near normal speed all of the tones seem to be correct. First tones are all equally high, third tones are all low. In the program da shan repeated the sentence and the traces were almost identical.

My third attachment is from superstar Q&A on phoenix last sunday. The young lady is talking at about 7 characters per second, but not all of the characters that appear in the captions on screen are audible. I picked it because I couldn't hear any tones. In fact, from the pitch track, it is possible to detect third tone, but nothing else.

I haven't done this before, hopefully the attachments will work.

My conclusions are that I expect tones are falling into disuse by younger generation Mandarin Chinese speakers.

But if you are want to know what your own speech is like, you could use WASP to check it.

[<<恒心>>]

Very interesting post... do you have a link for this WASP thingy?

I can only speculate that the 'ming' at the end of 聪明 was pronounced as a neutral tone, which following a first tone would then be a lower relative tone. Why? Who knows.

As for tones falling into disuse, I'll believe it when I hear it... though I'm not holding my breath.

[HashiriKata]

My conclusions are that I expect tones are falling into disuse by younger generation Mandarin Chinese speakers.

How much more presumptuous can one get??!

[sui.generis]

UCL Wasp

As requested

[Yuchi]

My conclusions are that I expect tones are falling into disuse by younger generation Mandarin Chinese speakers.

Uh, no.

[roddy]

There's a nice long list of free (mostly, at least) software tools for audio analysis, etc, on that site here.

My conclusions are that I expect tones are falling into disuse by younger generation Mandarin Chinese speakers.

Actually if you ever hear a bunch of teenagers slurring back and forth at each other, you can sometimes get the impression that all of Mandarin's sounds are falling into disuse and a new language based entirely on minor variations on the schwa is evolving. But again, that would be a bit of a leap

How much more presumptuous can one get??!

I'm not sure that was really necessary. If you think the guy's wrong it might be better to say so and ideally explain why. There's a difference between mistaken and presumptuous, one being a natural consequence of learning, the other a personality defect.

[Hero Doug]

You know the fact that you guys notice the younger generation isn't using tones or slurring the language is far from a leap. If that's what you see that's what you see. The only thing that may be a leap is applying it country wide. At the very least it's an eye opener that you can't just go out and learn Marandarin from anyone (at least pronunciation) as they might very well have a poor accent.

[xianu]

Tones are always there, but, I think as the audio software showed, not all the tones are given equal value, and only certain ones are actually stressed. Many end up in a sort of fuzzy neutral or sort of mini-tone zone. I remember a friend of mine, who we used to call a tone nazi, was speaking with some chinese friends. Something extraordinary happened, and the girls said, "不可能" but the tones were very obvious bu4, ke5 and then the neng went something like 2-3-4. She asked “那是设么声调？” they just looked at her blankly. point is, once people speak at regular speed, not all tones get their full value. Often one of the things Chinese always say about foreign accents is that the laowai always sound like they are singing, probably bc learners spend so much time pronouncing and making sure the tones are correct.

[Hero Doug]

You know I was thinking about mentioning fluent speech and proper speech. To anyone who pay's attention to language (their own, other's they know well, etc) they'll notice that in fluent speech we often don't say words/phrases how their supposed to be said.

As xianu said, this most likely happens with tones.

And as lao daiwei and Roddy said, maybe the younger generation is lazier then the older generation with regards to tones. I'm sure you've seen the jokes in the media of a teenager talking to their parents and their parents saying "what the hell is he talking about? I don't get these kid's nowadays". (slang and whatnot)

No reason something similar can't happen here.

[carlo]

Pitch tracks only show an intonation contour. Tone shapes are 'embedded' within this contour, just like lines drawn on an elastic rubber band that is stretched and deformed. So you shouldn't expect to be able to see regular and immediately recognizable tone shapes there.

If the duration of a syllable is shortened, for example, the pitch variation will be smaller, because you have no time to do a full glide. That is true of any language, not just Chinese, but you wouldn't conclude from this that stress in English is disappearing too.

Personally I think when you are learning you should first practice with individual sounds and full tones, and then learn to string them together in a way that sounds natural. It's a bit like playing tennis, it's not that you always have to hit your smash with perfect footwork and full power, but you train that way, so that it's easier to adapt to more complex real game situations.

[bomaci]

Actually tones get reduced much more than the text books tells us. I am starting to think that mandarin has much more sandhi than text books says. Listen to this example sentence. This is a host at 新浪聊天室 saying the following sentence: "为什么会拿这样的一个题材来做情景喜剧,是不是特有生活感悟?". I have also slowed down the 题材来做情景 part.

Listen to how almost all the tones have been flattened out.

weishenme hui.mp3

ticailaizuo - slow.mp3