2nd tone and 4th tone

[lproxster]

i have trouble finding the tones in a conversation, particularly the 2nd and 4th tone, but in my Chinese-English dictionary it says that:

2nd tone= sounds like "what?" a.k.a-sounds like a ques.

4th tone=sounds like "right!" a.k.a- agreeing with someone

my friend (whose been studying Chinese for years) says that it's correct, but my chinese teacher says the pronunciation differently.

So do these analogies work?

[Rrina]

I'm a beginner and the tones are still a nightmare for me but the following site has been helpful:

http://www.shufawest.us/language/tonedrill.html

I also got the "question" analogy for the 2d tone and I do think it works. For the 4th tone, whatI've found a more useful comparison is a "scolding".

[Han-tiger]

I think the following is correct.

2nd tone= sounds like "what?" a.k.a-sounds like a ques.

4th tone=sounds like "right!" a.k.a- agreeing with someone

[OneEye]

Wouldn't it make more sense to listen to recordings of the two tones instead of reading a written explanation? That reminds me of the poster who read that 我是 was pronounced "wour shee." Don't try to make sense of Chinese pronunciation from written English.

Try the FSI Standard Chinese Pronunciation and Romanization Module. Download the Resource Module Text and tapes 1-6 of the P&R Module. This will help your pronunciation and tones tremendously. Heck, use the whole course if you like. You won't go too far wrong with it.

[roddy]

I'm not sure someone with no experience of speaking a tonal language could accurately reproduce (or even hear) the tones just from a recording, and the analogies with English (or any L1) can be pretty damned valuable. If I remember correctly FSI also uses them.

[Luobot]

I think the analogies work to get you off the ground. Eventually, they become internalized, and you forget about the analogies. The “Right!” analogy is more positive than the one I used: I was told to stamp my foot when I used the fourth tone to capture the sound’s mood. In fact, the fourth tone does not have any emotional connotation of any sort whatsoever. So you have to be a little bit careful not to overdo some of these analogies or you may go through life sounding like a scary, young Mandarin. But that said, anything that gets you off the ground is probably a good thing.

Ps - The tone drill in Rrina’s post is quite good. Nice link.

[OneEye]

It's a very rare person who can't hear that one pitch is higher than another, or that the pitch rises or falls. Hearing the different tones contrasted is a great way to learn to distinguish them, unless you happen to be in the microscopic minority that can't actually differentiate pitch.

It just makes more sense to me to listen to recordings of tones (it is, after all, a spoken language) and learn to hear and produce them in that way than to read a written explanation and hope you're saying it right. Nobody would say that you can learn French pronunciation from a book without ever hearing it, and I don't think you can learn good Chinese pronunciation from a book either, without some audio to back it up. Note, I never said use only audio and no books ("just from a recording").

[Luobot]

The following double tone drill from the same site as above is a little more challenging:

http://www.shufawest.us/language/dual-tonedrill.html

[lproxster]

alright, thnx!