Post a sample of your pronunciation here!

[Tomsima]

@LinZhenPu

My wife (Chinese) said 'sounds kind of like 廣東人, but agrees with your statement.

[LinZhenPu]

?

[cal2u]

Wow, it's been over two years since I last posted.

 

I think I've made significant progress, but I'm a lot less sure about the intonation for phrases, e.g. "bu2gou4liu2li4". Knowing where to pause also might be an issue. Any thoughts?

chinese pronunciation.mp3

[Tomsima]

@cal2u

Sounds really good

[Flickserve]

2 hours ago, Tomsima said:

My wife (Chinese) said 'sounds kind of like 廣東人, but agrees with your statement.

 

@LinZhenPu

 

I don't think you sound like a Cantonese person speaking Mandarin. But you sound smooth enough to communicate easily. Now if you spoke 标准普通话，I would definitely be impressed. 

 

我觉得他的发音比广东人说普通话区别很大的。☺️

[LinZhenPu]

It wouldn't surprise me if I do sound a bit like a Cantonese person speaking Mandarin. I live in an area with a very large population of Cantonese immigrants.

@cal2u

The way you say 觉 sounds more like 'jew' or 局, there should be a stronger 'e' sound at the end. Similar with how you say 之. It seems like you are cutting your ending vowels in half.

[XiaoXi]

On 7/13/2017 at 6:14 AM, 陳德聰 said:

Also just 很多机会练习 felt a bit strange on the 机会, like you put extra stress on 会. Have you done much work on your sentence level intonation? Your last sentence sounded the most natural and comfortable, but it's not like you're pronouncing things wrong.

What I noticed in natural speech for myself and Chinese people is that 机会 is normally pronounced with 会 as 轻声. It looks like he's pronounced it with 四声 here. Btw did you ever post your pronunciation recording? I was looking through but didn't notice it yet although I may have missed it. 

[陳德聰]

12 hours ago, LinZhenPu said:

The way you say 觉 sounds more like 'jew' or 局, there should be a stronger 'e' sound at the end. Similar with how you say 之. It seems like you are cutting your ending vowels in half.

I disagree, and think this comment is both incorrect and unnecessary.

 

At this point, cal2u’s pronunciation has basically reached a level of standard that there is little room to improve, and over the phone, notwithstanding the stuttering, I would likely imagine him being Chinese.

 

@LinZhenPu my phone browser apparently doesn’t like to stream m4a files so I will have to give yours a listen when I go into the office tomorrow.

[CherrylS]

21 hours ago, cal2u said:

Wow, it's been over two years since I last posted.

 

I think I've made significant progress, but I'm a lot less sure about the intonation for phrases, e.g. "bu2gou4liu2li4". Knowing where to pause also might be an issue. Any thoughts?

 

Your browser does not support the HTML5 audio tag.

 

 

 

chinese pronunciation.mp3

You sound really good to me!

Do you have any tips on how to improve pronunciation?

[Publius]

cal2u's accent is really good. even the stuttering feels natural. could easily pass as chinese over the phone. that is, until the very end -- the mispronouned liu4li4 is kind of a giveaway ?

[陳德聰]

On 10/19/2018 at 7:30 PM, LinZhenPu said:

"我觉得我的发音还是不太标准“

I am not good with American regional accents but I think you sound like a New Yorker or someone from New Jersey like Joe Pesci. This actually makes sense for your comments in the other thread about nobody caring anymore, because I think you've reached the like, intelligible but nothing special phase of your pronunciation where native speakers may be less inclined to comment because it's clear no enthusiastic encouragement is needed.

[陳德聰]

On 10/21/2018 at 8:39 AM, XiaoXi said:

Btw did you ever post your pronunciation recording? I was looking through but didn't notice it yet although I may have missed it. 

Good catch. I have been actively avoiding posting my own pronunciation because I hate the sound of my own voice and I rarely have anything interesting to say.

 

But here you go. Me being 得瑟 about bigots in my town not getting elected:

Pronunciation Sample 1.m4a

[Tomsima]

@陳德聰
how's your pronunciation? I mean, so good there's no way i would ever guess you had ever even studied Chinese. I don't know much about your background? Are you heritage, did you listen to a lot of Chinese when you were young?

[陳德聰]

@Tomsima I started learning Mandarin ~14 years ago. I did not even know what Mandarin was until I was in high school. During my undergrad (Minor in Chinese) I spent a year studying in Shanghai, during which I took Mandarin for a semester and Chinese Economics and Business for a semester, all while living with my Mandarin-speaking boyfriend, who then moved to Canada a year later and we now live in the Chinese-est city in Canada where I work as an interpreter. I've been speaking Mandarin basically every day of my life for the last 6 years so I suspect that might do it.

[stapler]

Extremely impressive! Makes me feel quite ashamed!

[cal2u]

On 10/21/2018 at 7:17 PM, CherrylS said:

Do you have any tips on how to improve pronunciation?

I've tried to focus a lot on how it "feels" to say different pitches. At some point, I noticed that I tend to speak English with a lot of tension in my vocal cords (vocal fry). This makes it a lot harder to pronounce the 2nd tone in particular, so I've spent a lot of time practicing relaxing my voice and changing pitch very deliberately. I've had some trouble saying mei3guo2, correctly in the past, so I'll practice saying different guo2 words to really carve out that upper-rising tone contour. Realizing that 2nd tone should be pretty high (transition from 3 to 5 on a scale from 1 to 5) was also important step for me. When I'm walking around, I'll practice saying some really dumb, dramatic phrases to practice using a wide range of sentence types. I think some combination of these exercises (plus watching a little bit of tv) has helped me. I used to voice chat with language partners on HelloTalk, but it's been a while since I've done that.

 

13 hours ago, Publius said:

the mispronouned liu4li4 is kind of a giveaway ?

Haha, thanks for letting me know. I always mess up 2nd tone! (e.g. 美锅 ）

 

9 hours ago, 陳德聰 said:

Me being 得瑟 about bigots in my town not getting elected:

I'm just sad for the children. 真是个悲伤的故事 ?

[XiaoXi]

On 10/23/2018 at 2:50 AM, 陳德聰 said:

Good catch. I have been actively avoiding posting my own pronunciation because I hate the sound of my own voice and I rarely have anything interesting to say.

 

But here you go. Me being 得瑟 about bigots in my town not getting elected:

Woah....I think I could even pretend to mock your pronunciation but it would be like trying to mock a Ferrari. I was gonna say it does sound a little gay and was wondering if you studied in Taiwan or something...but your subsequent post cleared all that up nicely.

[陳德聰]

1 hour ago, XiaoXi said:

I was gonna say it does sound a little gay and was wondering if you studied in Taiwan or something...but your subsequent post cleared all that up nicely.

Hahahahahaha this made my day. I believe what you're hearing is a combination of my intense vocal fry as well as my Taiwanese-leaning accent.

[Ruky]

Hi,  I posted a sample of me reading.  I would be eternally grateful to receive some feedback. thank you!

 

海上日出

巴金

在船上，为了看日出，我特地起了个大早。那时天还没有亮，周围是很寂静的，只有机器房的声音，天空变成了浅蓝色，很浅很浅的；转眼间天边出现了一道红霞，慢慢儿扩大了它的范围，强了它的光亮。我知道太阳要从那天际升起来了，便目不转睛地望着那里  

recording.wav

[Meng Lelan]

Where did you find this excerpt?