Post a sample of your pronunciation here!

[creamyhorror]

Thanks a bunch, jkhsu.

1. I think I collapse the 'g' with the subsequent 'guo' a bit. Hmm, doesn't it seem natural to you to do that?

2. Yep, that pause would probably have helped. I did feel I went through that phrase a little fast.

Grew up speaking English/Singlish but started learning Mandarin/Chinese in school from age 7 onward. I also heard Mandarin on TV when the Chinese channel was on. But Chinese conversation was basically limited to Chinese lessons, and I've never really been comfortable speaking the language. I've always been a stickler for pronunciation and diction, though. Reading fluently is difficult without practice because I neither use the language much in everyday life nor read much in it. That recording took countless retries.

Still working with a lot of Shanghainese/Chinese in the office? Made much progress in the language/culture?

[jkhsu]

@creamyhorror: You're welcome. As others have said, it's a lot easier to correct others.

Grew up speaking English/Singlish but started learning Mandarin/Chinese in school from age 7 onward. I also heard Mandarin on TV when the Chinese channel was on.

That makes sense. Your early exposure probably contributed to your native sounding tones. The reason why I asked this question is because I've listened to heritage learners in the USA speak in my Chinese classes before and they fell into these basic categories: (1) those who grew up speaking Mandarin with parents (2) those who grew up speaking Cantonese or another Chinese dialect with parents and (3) those who rarely spoke Chinese at all. The (1)s typically had perfect or near perfect (at least to my ears) pronunciation. The (2)s will sometimes carry some accents from their native dialects but definitely don't sound like those who just started learning as an adult. Most of the (3)s pretty much sound just like any other adult learning Chinese. My observation was that heritage learners (by ethnicity only) who rarely (or never) spoke Chinese and only started learning as an adult didn't have a significant advantage over non-heritage learners in pronunciation.

As I said before, your pronuncation sounds like the (1)s that I've heard.

Creamyhorror's 让 sounds like ruang, for some reason.

This is a good catch by Gato. I listened to your recording again and compared it to the one on Slow Chinese as well as Kenny's recording. I can confirm that to my ears, you do sound like you are saying "ruang" instead of "ran".

Still working with a lot of Shanghainese/Chinese in the office? Made much progress in the language/culture?

Unfortunately, not so much these days as I'm only working on my business on the side and am no longer in China. I'm hoping to improve my reading and vocab in the meantime.

[David Wong]

Practicing this has been torture. TORTURE!! 老舍头已经硬了。

My language partner likes it and wanted me to read it, so here it is.

But at the same time it's been fun. I rarely get to say some of those words in daily conversations and it's fun to see if I could wrap my tongue around them.

Here's the link to the text. Note that I could only handle the first two paragraphs.

请试试听。

我不知道(1).mp3

[gato]

That must have been for Valentine Day. Very romantic. Hehe.

[David Wong]

@gato, maybe it was just a coincidence? One never knows. Haha.

[xuefang]

In order to improve my pronunciation I first need to know what I'm doing wrong. It's hard to spot all the mistake myself, so that's why I decided to ask for your help. Here is a short clip of me reading a story from Graded Chinese Reader 2, it was the closest book I had at the moment and I think you can get a basic idea of my pronunciation from this short clip.

Like I said, any feedback is welcome and appreciated. How is my pronunciation doing? What about my tones? Do you understand what I'm reading?

Don't worry about being too cruel, I can take it

MyPronunciation.mp3

( If you want to know how I sound when not reading from a book you can check out a short video from Youku. )

[jkhsu]

Like I said, any feedback is welcome and appreciated. How is my pronunciation doing? What about my tones? Do you understand what I'm reading?

In general, you need to work on your tones and consistency. Sometimes you'll pronounce the same character differently. Overall, I can definitely understand what you are reading but you do have a bit of a Cantonese accent. I believe you are studying in Guangzhou right? I don't think everyone needs to speak with a Beijing accent so I wouldn't worry about that. Here are my detailed comments:

Disclaimer: I do not have the transcript and have written down only what I assumed you were reading. So let me know if there are errors in what I assumed.

0:01 "从小" - Your 从 sounds like the 1st tone. It should be the 2nd tone.

0:05 "在美国长大" - Your 美 sounds like the 4th tone. It should be the 3rd tone. However, you say it correctly in 0:02 "在美国生活" and later on. Are you reading 美国 as a single word or separate characters. If you always read it as a single word, that might fix the inconsistency. Also in general your 国 doesn't have the 2nd tone. It almost sounds like the 4th tone (like 过) at times.

0:11 "他总想回中国看看" - Your 中 sounds like the 4th tone. It should be the 1st tone.

0:18 "他想到中国生活一段时间" - Again your 中 sounds like the 4th tone when it should be the 1st tone. Your 生 also sounds like the 4th tone when it should be the first tone.

0:23 "顺便游览一些名胜古迹" - Your 便 sounds like the 2nd tone. It should be the 4th tone.

0:27 "决定在北京" - This is a tough one. Your 北 sounds a bit off. I'd say you need to go deeper on your 3rd tone for 北. Also, your 京 sounds like "jin1" instead of "jing1". It's a bit short.

0:34 "一起登上了飞往中国的飞机" - Your 上 sounds like the 3rd tone. It should be 4th tone.

0:39 "当时, 他真是兴奋极了 - Your 时 sounds like the 4th tone when it should be the 2nd tone. Your 真 sounds like 2nd tone when it should be 1st tone. Your 奋 sounds like the 2nd tone when it should be the 4th tone.

Edited after imron's correction on 美 actually being the 3rd tone.

[imron]

Your 美 sounds like the 4th tone. It should be the 2nd tone.

[jkhsu]

Thanks imron for the correction on 美. I'll update my post.

[xuefang]

@jkhsu Thank you so much! I don't just live in Guanghou, I also have a Cantonese boyfriend with who I speak Mandarin all day long. So I'm not surprised that there's some Cantonese accent.

I will go through that short chapter wiht the Imron Method + shadowing and keep in mind your feedback. Maybe later I could record it again and see if there's been any improvement.

[imron]

The Chinese Breeze Graded Chinese Readers also have audio don't they? When you're practicing a sentence, first load up the audio in something like Audacity and listen to just that sentence on a loop over and over. You need to get it to the point where your mind has a deep impression of the sounds, and you can start to hear and reproduce these sounds in your mind without the audio playing (maybe even at the beginning you might need to start with half-sentences). Once you can do this, then when you record yourself you will find it much easier to identify what is different between your own recording and the native recording.

Ask jkhsu mentioned, your tones need work. You mentioned somewhere either here on your blog that when you are speaking you tend to forget about the tones. To me, that indicates that you are still at a point (consciously or subconsciously) where you view a syllable as sound + tone, rather than the tone being an integral and inseperable part of a sound.

What you need to do is start to build a mental model where individual tones are distinct sounds e.g. ā is not just a+first-tone but rather it is ā, a sound at least as distinct from á, ǎ, and à as ch is from sh, and b is from p etc. After all, you don't see people remembering pronunciation like 颇 as bo + aspiration (that would be confusing, and you'd likely start pronouncing all your 'po's as 'bo's) and likewise you shouldn't do that for tones either. This way, it is not a matter of remembering tones or not. When you learn a word, you encode the tone into your mental model of what the correct sound is, and you are as unlikely to forget it or mix it up as you are to forget the difference between sh and ch or b and p.

To build this up, once again I recommend looping audio. Find (or have a native speaker create) some audio just going over basic sounds e.g. mā má mǎ mà bā bá bǎ bà (and also with more complicated finals and if you like, some examples of tone sandhi), and then just listen to it in a loop over and over - don't do this in front of a computer, put it on an mp3 player or something and just listen to it constantly for a couple of days. As you are listening, have your mind start to follow along with the sounds. You want to get to a point where these sounds are just stuck in your head (much the same way that sometimes a song will get stuck in your head and you find yourself humming it over and over), and that you can accurately recall the same recording in your mind without any effort.

Then when you are learning a new word, don't try to remember the pronunciation as sound + tone, rather just remember it with one of the correct sounds that is now stuck in your head. It will also help to make a mental note that pronouncing it with any of the other tones is incorrect, e.g. if you were learning the word 妈, not only hear in your mind that mā is the correct sound but also mentally hear that má mǎ mà are all incorrect sounds for this word.

[anonymoose]

It seems to me like you know what the correct tones should be, it's just that you have problems actually applying them consistently in practice. I suffer from the same issue sometimes.

[xuefang]

@imron Yes, the Graded Chinese Reader (different from Chinese Breeze) does have an audio cd.

I think you are right, that I think a word is ma+tone, which makes it easy to forget the tone. In most cases I do remember the tone and could write the pinyin correctly, but I just can't produce it correctly like anonymoose said. I wil definitely try what you suggested, as tones are a big problem for me.

Thank you everyone, this is the most helpful forum ever!

[imron]

In most cases I do remember the tone and could write the pinyin correctly, but I just can't produce it correctly like anonymoose said. I wil definitely try what you suggested, as tones are a big problem for me.

Once you learn to incorporate the tones as part of the sound, they become much less of a problem, and you can basically forget about learning them because your mental model of the sound already encodes this information for you naturally.

If you ever need to know the tone, then simply say the word in your head and work backwards from that to get it. If you pay attention, you will find this is often what native speakers do if you ask them what tone a character is - they'll sound it out in all 4 tones and choose the one that matches to give you your answer.

[xuefang]

@imron I found the perfect audio material to help me with my tones from youtube. I convert them to mp3 and start listening today!

[imron]

Nice! When you convert them to mp3, you might want to use an audio editor to loop each of the 4-tone groups a couple of times so that when you're listening to it you get a number of repetitions of the same sounds before it progresses to the next group.

[xuefang]

@imron I just finished playing with Audacity.

In the first part I have all the pinyin sounds with tones form this youtube channel. They are arranged that first there are all the sounds starting with C, then all the sounds starting with D and so on. (I didn't edit these sound files as it would take forever.)

Audio for the second part I got from Sinoplice (John has excellent Mandarin Chinese Tone Pair Drills over there). I arranges the audio that on the first track there are words that begin with the first tone (1+1, 1+2, 1+3, 1+4 and 1+5, on that order), then words beginning with second tone and so on. For these tracks I added pauses, so I can decide if I want to listen and repeat, only listen or do shadowing.

I would have more audio on my old textbook's cd, including tone sandhi. Unfortunately the cd is quite damaged so I haven't been able to get the audio from it. If I get it working, I will add those to my playlist.

If someone is interested in having this playlist including the first and/or second part, just let me know.

[imron]

Just remember you probably don't want to add too much variety. The idea is you want to be hearing the same sounds over and over and over so they stick in your brain. It may be better in that sense to just have a smaller number of representative sounds, rather than every possible combination of initial+final.

[WestTexas]

First paragraph of Wikipedia article on Beijing. Yes, I know, it's much better than the last recording I posted in this thread.

Here's the text:

北京市，简称“京”，旧称「燕京」、「北平」，是中华人民共和国的首都、直辖市和国家中心城市，是中华人民共和国的政治、文化和国际交流中心，同时是中国经济金融的决策和管理中心[1]。中国“四大古都”之一，拥有6项世界遗产，是世界上拥有文化遗产项目数最多的城市，具有一定的国际影响力，也是世界上最大的城市之一。

Just realized I forgot the 市 at the beginning anyway some feedback on my pronunciation would be appreciated.

BeijingWikipediaFirstParagraph.mp3

[creamyhorror]

anyway some feedback on my pronunciation would be appreciated.

This is a representative phrase for your reading so I'll focus on it:

"是中华人民共和国的首都"

1. Your rhythm is odd - 中华 and 人民 are rushed and scrunched together, with a weird pause in-between. This rhythm, which continues throughout the reading, really throws me off as a listener, especially because it's strangely energetic. You should try slowing down and reading at a more even pace.

2. Tones aren't pronounced fully. The second tones on 华, 民, 国 should be fully pronounced and drawn out (your 华 and 国 sound like 3rd tones). 共, properly a fourth tone, sounds like a first tone in your reading.

3. You messed up the reading of 中华, making 华 sound like "kua". Probably just a temporary error though.

Fix the rhythm and tones and you'll go far, since your pronunciation is quite alright. (Exception: your 产 (in 遗产) is mispronounced as "chian").