Post a sample of your pronunciation here!

[wushucrab20]

nice pronunciation eddy. sounds like you put in a lot of effort

Edited October 6, 2016 at 05:53 AM by wushucrab20

[wushucrab20]

Here's my attempt at a presentation I worked on this semester.

[陳德聰]

Sometimes you sound a bit like a robot haha, I think that is a result of this being a presentation. Did you memorize certain parts? Because sometimes you speak extremely fast and sometimes you sound like you're thinking of what to say. In general, your tones sound good, same with your general pronunciation. I think it's a matter of sentence level intonation, where you are keeping everything all at the same level, rather than allowing natural ups and downs.

 

One quirk is that you pronounce word-final "e" as kind of close to "o" sometimes unexpectedly. Like 那么 and 呢 me and ne came out with your tongue kind of far back and sounding like a namo which seems kind of normal and nuo which was a bit surprising, but I kind of like it.

[wushucrab20]

Thanks! It's good to have some feedback. I didn't memorize anything, but I did practice giving the presentation multiple times and it was slightly different in terms of the way I phrased things each time.  I found certain things were just easier to describe, or the ideas and connections would come more naturally. There were some areas where it was just harder to keep everything moving smoothly. Throughout most of the presentation I was intentionally trying not to go too quickly, so that the audience would have more time to take in the various concepts.

[Flickserve]

I just listened to it and saw your slides. The graphics are good. Some of them have a few too many written words.

I don't understand the content (it is me that's the problem as my Chinese level is not high :-) ). The first part you go very fast and the second part is easier to listen to and has pauses to allow a listener a little time to reflect. You will need to pace the delivery in a way that assumes the audience knows little of your topic.

I agree that there is not enough of the ups or downs in the speech that helps bring a message across. Take the position that you are giving a tutorial and helping people understand rather than just delivering information.

If you run out of time, then you have too much information to deliver and need to cut down the content.

It comes across that your natural thinking process is very fast - you need to be even more helpful to lesser mortals like me. :-)

[cal2u]

Here's a recording of me rambling in Chinese. To me, it sounds like I talk to much in the middle of my lips. This really isn't that great of a recording, but it's probably pretty faithful to how I'll talk in real life -- stumbling through words (there's also probably grammar mistakes), but maybe it's understandable

 

https://soundcloud.com/caleb-bryant-2/speaking-sample-1

[Flickserve]

That's pretty decent. 4th tone sounds a bit quiet.

It doesn't sound particularly American to me. Different from native, yes. American , no.

[889]

Agreed: obviously not native, but nothing really says American to me, either.

 

To my ear, your overall pitch sounds too high and your overall stress a bit flat: you sound a bit bored so the listener feels a bit bored, too.

[Guest realmayo]

Take the following with a pinch of salt (i.e. do not attempt unsupervised!):

 

You might find it interesting to see if a native speaker detects any difference when you pay more attention to for instance the "i" in words like "jiu": of course there should not be two separate spaced sounds but you should be able to hear that the 'iu' sound starts different to how it ends; and together it's a different sound than say the "ou" in "zhou". Same could apply to e.g. the 'i' in 'xiang' as well as say the 'u' in 'xue' etc etc. That level of precision, applied across the pinyin sounds, can help with more of a Chinesey and less of a Westerner accent, I think. I guess creating those sounds helps achieve more of the front-mouth effect rather than the back-of-throat Western accent. In the past once I got 'good enough to be understood' with pinyin pronunciation I then stopped paying too much attention to it and started fretting exclusively about tones, which I regret.

[stapler]

I just had a listen to everyone's recordings on here. It was quite interesting. Strangely, I felt like I couldn't recognise any English native speakers accent in their Chinese (but I seem to be able to identify other European, Japanese, Indian, etc accents in their Chinese!)

 

In the spirit of the thread I offer up my own recordings for criticism and advice. I personally feel my biggest problem is with third tones turning into second tones, especially when the third tone precedes a fourth tone. And to a lesser extent, native speakers tell me my fourth tones are bit aggressive at times. I hope you guys can spot the other common mistakes in my speaking.

 

I've attached two files. One is the few sentences about the weather that people were using at the beginning of the thread. It was a bit short so I also recorded a podcast script to provide something a little longer.

 

 

kongju.mp3

tianqi.mp3

[LinZhenPu]

@stapler

Are you sure you are just a beginner?

[陳德聰]

As far as I know stapler is not a beginner? Maybe I have not read something you've read. I hope to have some time today/this weekend to give a good listen.

[LinZhenPu]

Under his profile pic he has his Chinese level description as 'Beginner'. I would put him at at least ‘还可以’。I suppose it has just been a long time since he wrote it as that and has not updated it, which is why I pointed it out .

[stapler]

Sorry. I just changed it to make it more up to date 

[陳德聰]

@cal2u

 

Just listening to your recording now.

 

Dàjiā hǎo, wǒ jiào Bái Zǐ C(h)én(g), láizì meiguo. Wǒ shì dàxuéshēng-gāngcái jìnqù* le dàyī, suǒyǐ xiàge xuéqī-wǒ yào dà'èr. Wǒ hěn gāoxìng gěi nǐmen tīngtīng kàn wǒ shuo de zěnmeyàng. Wǒ yě gāngcái huídào meiguo. Wǒ liǎngge xīngqī yǐqiān, jiù zài Chéngdū de Xīnán Cáidà liúxué. Wǒ de dàxué gēn Cáidà yǒu guānxi. Tāmen bā-jiú nián yǒu zhège xiàngmù kěyǐ liùge xīngqī zài Xīnán Cáidà xu*éxí Hànyǔ. Wǒmen jīngcháng zuò bàogao hé zài jiàoshì lǐ shuōhuà. Wǒ xīwàng wǒ qǐgāo le wǒ de kǒuyǔ, dànshì wǒ duì wǒ de tóngxu*è de yìnshàng zhí hái kěyǐ. Wǒ zhīdào wǒ yǒude shíhòu wǒ shuō de bǔ liúlì, dànshì wǒ juéde wǒ xīwàng rúguo wǒ duō shuō wǒ kěyǐ chéngwèi gèng hǎo.

 

I marked in red parts that I felt could be improved on in terms of pronunciation. The u* means that you struggled to pronounce the ü in these words. Red on a syllable that is the correct tone means that your tone was individually correct but relative to the the whole word was mostly too high (dàyī, xuéqī). Red with no tone markings mean you didn't clearly pronounce a different tone, but that your tone wasn't clearly the tone it was supposed to be. Red on a vowel with tone mark just means your tone was wrong. Realmayo already mentioned your "xiangmu" and "xue", I would recommend just practicing the "x" initial with an "i" included and practice your pronunciation of the ü vowel in "qù", "xué". Where I've marked with hyphens, your speed inexplicably picks up dramatically where I would have expected a pause.

 

Side note: měiguó <- you need to practice this tone pair, as your pronunciation is consistently a bit odd on the "mei", otherwise just start saying you're from Yīngguó if it's easier to say ^_^

 

@stapler

 

Yours is coming, I promise lol!

[Guest realmayo]

Someone, maybe John 'splice Pasden, had a theory that Americans learn 美国 and 没有 and the two-third-tones rule pretty much immediately and it can screw up their 美国 pronunciation for years.

[LinZhenPu]

Damn, I just realised I've been pronouncing 美国 wrong.

[Flickserve]

@陳德聰

That is a really nice method to highlight particular tone errors. I should try it (after my holidays).

[Demonic_Duck]

@陈德聪 and @cal2u: I'm hearing a different problem with 美国. The 美 sounds fine (or at least passable), but the 国 consistently sounds like 1st tone (should be 2nd).

[陳德聰]

Mmmm... If anything it sounds like mei2guo2 to me.