Tone Improvement While Learning Second Regionalect of Chinese

[wushijiao]

I would like to hear about people’s experiences in regards to tones if you are learning a second regionalect of Chinese. For example, if you have learned Mandarin first, call that C1. If you then learn Cantonese next, call that C2. (Or, it could be that you learnt Cantonese first C1, and Hakka second C2).

In any case, as you have started learning your C2, has our ability to correctly recognize and reproduce tones in your C1:

-Improved greatly?

-improved somewhat?

-stayed about the same?

-decreased somewhat?

-generally made me more confused all around?

In my case, I have the feeling that while I have been learning Cantonese, my Mandarin tone abilities have improved quite significantly. There are a few factors that contribute to that I think, but I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has had a similar experience. Or, if anyone knows what Chinese linguists tend to say about this issue, that would also be interesting to hear.

[Lu]

I learned Mandarin for 6+ years, then started on Taiwanese. My Mandarin was already fairly good at that point, and learning Taiwanese didn't have any significant influence on my ability. (Knowing C1 did help A LOT in learning C2, but that's no big surprise.) It may have helped with a word here and there, but nothing notable. But the effect might be bigger if you don't have a strong basis in C1 yet.

[wushijiao]

Great Lu. Thanks for replying . I think that my C1 also helped a lot in learning my C2 (of course).

I

[wushijiao]

Just to post a bit more about this subject, perhaps in the hope that it will entice other to reply, here are my random impressions:

The Cantonese high-level tone, is a bit like the Mandarin first tone, but to my hear, it’s quite a bit higher. I’ve noticed that when native speakers of Cantonese speak Mandarin, their first tone tends to be a bit too high (I first noticed this a few years ago in Shanghai, when a classmate from Malaysia (native Cantonese speaker) was speaking Mandarin). In short, it seems to me like the Cantonese first tone is like the Mandarin first tone on steroids, while the high rising tone seems to be like the Mandarin second tone on steroids. I think that, at least for me, these two tones are by far the easiest to recognize because they seem so exaggerated.

Then the middle level tone, as well as the low rising seem to be the hardest to recognize for me, while the low level and low falling seem a bit easier.

Overall, however, I think getting fairly familiar with another tone system (due to hundreds of hours of audio work) seems to have had the side effect me more sensitive to tones in Mandarin as well. I would like to think that my ability to speak tonally and remember the tones of Mandarin words from memory (rather than what tone mark I remembered them having on a flashcard which doesn’t necessarily mean that one will be able to reproduce it correctly even if you know in theory it should be the 4th tone) have improved quite considerably.

I also wonder about this, in that, Cantonese native speakers speaking Mandarin tend to speak Mandarin tonally correct (although their tone sandhi and stress seems off) while the reproduction of the pinyin, so to speak, often seems more problematic.

Any other thoughts on this subject?

[calibre2001]

I also wonder about this, in that, Cantonese native speakers speaking Mandarin tend to speak Mandarin tonally correct (although their tone sandhi and stress seems off) while the reproduction of the pinyin, so to speak, often seems more problematic.

I'm confused here. Isn't reproducing pinyin speaking mandarin? Or are you refering to the pronounciation drills for z,zh,c,ch,s sounds?

If so then them speaking Mandarin correctly is analogous to a musician who can't read notes but plays a piece perfectly?

[wushijiao]

I'm confused here. Isn't reproducing pinyin speaking mandarin? Or are you refering to the pronounciation drills for z,zh,c,ch,s sounds?

I was partly referring to those sounds, but some HKers speak with what I kind of think of as the "de facto Southern accent" that doesn't really distinguish between z/zh, s/sh, c/ch...etc. but that is basically equally standard and acceptable. So, I don't necessarily see those consonant issues as real "problems". But also other mistakes in terms of wrong vowel sounds are almost certainly problems.

My point wasn’t really to analyze native Cantonese speakers Mandarin or give them a hard time about that, but it was more to think about if Cantonese is your L1, and since one's L1 interference is always constant when you speak an L2, it's interesting that, at least according to me (and I'm not at all an authority on this), native Cantonese speakers seem to have less issues with tones than with consonant and vowel issues. If true, this would seem to indicate that knowing one tonal system is beneficial in learning another one, although by no means a perfect indicator that you'll be able to speak another language with perfect tones.

With this in mind, I kind of wondered if there were any people who, say, are long-term expats who can speak Mandarin pretty well and have started to study another branch of Chinese (Wu, Minnanhua, Cantonese, Hakka...etc), and if in that process if they had discovered any extra pay-offs in terms of their ability to speak tonally well in Mandarin getting better as a sort of weird side effect, or, if as Lu indicated, there really wasn't much influence on one's Mandarin. People might actually find that they confuse tones and sounds even more, and learning a C2 might actually be a bad idea. Who knows?

But I was thinking, if there would be enough people who could give there own personal experiences in terms of their Mandarin actually getting somewhat better after learning a C2, then this could be a pretty solid reason to learn a C2. Many people (like me), seriously weighed the pros and cons of learning a C2 (Shanghaiese, in my case), but at the end of the day found that the cons (would take up to much time making the opportunity costs of learning it (while not learning Mandarin) outweigh the benefits) were greater than the pros. But, if it'd be possible to show that one could actually get more "Da Shan"-esk, so to speak, in Mandarin by learning a C2, then many people might re-consider taking up a C2. I don't know.

Edited March 14, 2009 at 06:50 AM by wushijiao

[calibre2001]

But I was thinking, if there would be enough people who could give there own personal experiences in terms of their Mandarin actually getting somewhat better after learning a C2, then this could be a pretty solid reason to learn a C2. Many people (like me), seriously weighed the pros and cons of learning a C2 (Shanghaiese, in my case), but at the end of the day found that the cons (would take up to much time making the opportunity costs of learning it (while not learning Mandarin) outweigh the benefits) were greater than the pros. But, if it'd be possible to show that one could actually get more "Da Shan"-esk, so to speak, in Mandarin by learning a C2, then many people might re-consider taking up a C2. I don't know.

Knowing one form of chinese only gives an advantage in terms of grammar (ok that's arguable but true to some extent) and vocabulary thanks to standardised writing. Aside from that dialects are so different from each other that I would consider them different languages.

For me, I found learning characters helped me to subconsciously map the correct sounds to the character,both C1 and C2. The result is improvement in both Cs. Maybe it's because I'm a visual person. Nah, you just have to work damn hard that's all. There are no shortcuts in chinese.

The only way to learn a C2 properly is to eat, drink, sleep in that C2.

[WilsonFong]

My situation is probably a bit different since I grew up speaking Cantonese at home, but I've noticed that now that I speak Cantonese more often because I'm living in Guangzhou I've had a couple of people tell me that I have a bit of a Cantonese accent when I speak Mandarin, whereas when I was living in Dalian a lot of people told me I spoke with a very noticeable "western" accent. A couple of people even told me I sounded like a Uighur:roll:.

I've noticed that pronunciation errors made by Cantonese speakers sometimes happens if a word is pronounced almost the same in Mandarin as it is in Cantonese. For example I once heard someone pronounce 公司 as gong1xi1 in Mandarin and 东风 as dong1fong1 in Mandarin.

As for tone difficulties, I can't really speak for native Cantonese speakers but I think a lot of overseas Cantonese speakers have difficulty with the Mandarin 4th tone, but in general I think most speakers of tonal languages have little difficulty mastering the tones of other languages. The most common type of tonal error I make is when there is a two-character word in Mandarin that has the same tone on the first character as Cantonese but a different tone for the second character I sometimes end up pronouncing the word with the same tones as Cantonese.

[wushijiao]

The only way to learn a C2 properly is to eat, drink, sleep in that C2.

Haha! That's really true, calibre2001! You need to put in the effort and the time. I've found (to my dismay) that there aren't any shortcuts!

WilsonFong, it's interesting that the errors that are easiest to amek happen in words that are fairly similar.

As a native speaker of Cantonese, do you find that your Mandarin tones are generally better compared to Western people who have studied Mandarin for roughly the same amount of time as you have?

For what it's worth, I find that I often want to put a Mandarin fourth tone on words that I think deserve it (like when ending a sentence with 快) or something.

[Lu]

I agree with WilsonFong that many Cantonese speakers have trouble with the Mandarin 4th tone, they tend to pronounce it as a 1st.

I partly disagree with Calibre, I can't speak for other dialects, but at least for Minnanyu there is a strong relation between Mandarin tones and Minnan tones. 1st tone in Minnan is almost always also 1st in Mandarin, 3rd Minnan is 4th Mandarin, 5th Minnan is 2nd Mandarin, and a few more correlations that are less one-on-one but still very strong. If you know the tone in one C but not the other, you can make an educated guess and often get it right. When I first started learning Chinese there seemed to be no logic, no system behind the tones, but learning a bit of Minnanyu showed me that there is, I just didn't know enough (history, other dialects) to see it.

[calibre2001]

For what it's worth, here's my take on tones.

Most natives may not even realise they speak their language is tonal. If a learner make a mistake, they'll just say 'it's xx not x' and expect him to hear it like them. Poor learner, he probably couldn't hear the difference and no one can teach him that.

And I'll bet alot of natives arent pros in telling whether its tone 0 or 999 for that matter. Because its their language, they just learn to reproduce words (pronounciation + tones + accent in one) via the good ol listen and mimic method.

[skylee]

native Cantonese speakers seem to have less issues with tones than with consonant and vowel issues.

Not true in my case. And the problem, as WilsonFong and Lu pointed out, is usually the 4th / 1st tones mix-up. But I think I've come to accept that this is not going to improve.

I think I've learnt from our old member Quest how to match cantonese tones to mandarin tones (generally) -> C1~M1 （陰平）, C4~M2 （陽平）, C2 & C5~M3 （上）, C3 & C6~M4 （去）

[WilsonFong]

WilsonFong, it's interesting that the errors that are easiest to make happen in words that are fairly similar.

I think this is common throughout a lot of languages that are similar to each other. I mean, we all know the stereotypical French accent where a native French speaker speaking English pronounces words that are also in French with the French pronunciation, right?

As a native speaker of Cantonese, do you find that your Mandarin tones are generally better compared to Western people who have studied Mandarin for roughly the same amount of time as you have?

I don't know if I can be considered a native speaker of Cantonese. I grew up speaking it to my parents but I was born and raised in Canada. Up until a few years ago when I made a determined effort to improve my Chinese I spoke pretty broken Cantonese with the vocabulary of a five-year old. Because I've been focusing mainly on Mandarin lately I actually have a broader vocabulary in Mandarin than I do in Cantonese (i.e. I don't know the pronunciation of some characters in Cantonese) but I speak Cantonese with a more neutral accent than I do with Mandarin (I have a pretty noticeable North American accent). I don't know if my tones are better than the average westerner but I do make few mistakes and I've never had the feeling that learning tones was difficult at all.

Edited March 14, 2009 at 04:22 PM by WilsonFong
missed a couple of words

[renzhe]

As a native speaker of Cantonese, do you find that your Mandarin tones are generally better compared to Western people who have studied Mandarin for roughly the same amount of time as you have?

I can't answer for native speakers of Cantonese, but it has been my observation that this is absolutely true.

I've been going to this regular Chinese (Mandarin) speakers' corner. There are all kinds of people there, from Europeans who have learned Chinese, to native Chinese speakers who are fluent in Putonghua, to native Chinese speakers who are learning Putonghua (native speakers of a different Chinese dialect).

Almost without exception, the Europeans have terrible tones, while the Chinese learners of Mandarin get most of them right.

Of course, Europeans can learn proper tones too, but it does seem that crossing over from a different Chinese dialect is easier in terms of hearing and immitating tones than it is for an English or German speaker.

[wushijiao]

And the problem, as WilsonFong and Lu pointed out, is usually the 4th / 1st tones mix-up

It’s interesting to hear that, but I guess not all that surprising since modern Cantonese doesn’t have a high falling tone that acts like the Mandarin 4th tone. But, on the other hand, in this great link on John (from Chinese Pod’s) website, he describes that it is more common for learners of Chinese to confuse 1/4 and 2/3:

http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2008/12/10/toward-better-tones-in-natural-speech

Anyway, it’s been interesting to read all the responses to this topic.

[anonymoose]

My mandarin is fairly good and I am currently learning shanghainese. I don't think learning shanghainese has had any effect on my mandarin pronunciation, but I do have to put effort in to avoid using mandarin tones (especially the two 3rd tone sandhi) when speaking shanghainese.

[carlo]

Yes. Every new language you are exposed to teaches you to recognize and imitate new sounds. Cantonese, compared to Mandarin, was a workshop in applied phonetics. You expand your knowledge of speech sounds and learn to control your voice in new ways. For example the two rising tones of Cantonese and the Mandarin 2nd tone reinforced each other in some way, though I'm not sure I could describe it exactly.

It has also changed my approach to learning tones. At the beginning, I focused a lot on the theory (half third tones, how to stress individual syllables etc). The experience with dialects, where there is basically no theory to learn from, taught me that the "human recording machine" system is more efficient: one sentence at a time, listen until your ears bleed, then repeat, record, spot where it's different, do it again, etc.

[wushijiao]

Thanks carlo, I think that your post is what I was getting at.

I'm also trying to do the "human recording machine" system, of sorts.

[Altair]

When I first became semi-serious about learning Mandarin, I had a great deal of difficulty with the tones, despite having some background in some other tonal languages. I could usually reproduce and pick out the tones in isolation, but had a fair amount of difficulty in context. I would hear a simple phrase like 今天 and hear two different versions of what was supposed to be the same tone. It was not until I decided to learn a little Cantonese that I realized what the problem was. (By the way, I am self-taught and have almost no regular exposure to Chinese speakers.)

At one point, I was also puzzled that I was doing better with Cantonese tones than with Mandarin, even though Cantonese had more of them. This made me wonder what was going on and led me to two conclusions.

The tones in the languages I had learned prior to Chinese all had more or less persistent pitches. A high level tone at the beginning of the sentence would have more or less the same pitch as a word near the end of the sentence. This is what I hear in Cantonese. In Mandarin, however, I hear a great deal of variation. For instance, sometimes I hear the 期 in 过期 as a high level tone and sometimes as a mid-level tone at the same pitch as the Cantonese pronunciation of 試. This discovery led me to listen more in Mandarin to the pitch contours and less to the actual pitches.

Another difference I found is that to my ear, Cantonese has pretty much equal stresses on its words; whereas Mandarin has pronounced stress patterns, a little like English. In studying other languages, I have worked so hard to unlearn English stress patterns that I was unused to hearing this and mixed up stress variations in Mandarin with variations in pitch. I still have minor difficulties with the neutral tone sometimes, because the pitch will sound more distinctive to me than the lack of stress.

My Cantonese has almost vanished from non-use, but one thing that did help my Mandarin for a while was using Cantonese as a back-up for remembering tones. I find that the melody of Cantonese tones is more distinctive and easier to remember than the melody of Mandarin tones, and so occasionally when I forget a Mandarin tone, I can recall the Cantonese tone, especially when I remember the tone in phrases. For instance, for a while I would forget the Mandarin tone for 超 and would wonder if it was first or fourth tone, then I would remember the Cantonese pronunciation of 超級市場 and would know that it was first tone.

I am also sometimes helped with variant tones. When I remember that Cantonese has an entering tone for a particular word, I know to allow for the possibility of more than one tone in Mandarin, for instance with 室 or 血. This also sometimes helps explain when the mainland and Taiwan seem to have landed on different standards for a given tone, such as with 期. Cantonese would suggest that the Mandarin for this character should be second tone, like the Taiwanese standard.

I agree with WilsonFong that many Cantonese speakers have trouble with the Mandarin 4th tone, they tend to pronounce it as a 1st.

As I understand it, all Cantonese speakers have two variants for the "first" tone: one that is a high level tone, as in Mandarin, and another that starts high but drops to mid range. The books I used said that most people in Hong Kong used the high level variation, but that some speakers had free variation between the two. In the type of Cantonese that I studied, I used the high level tone for everything except when using the word 添 at the end of a sentence as the equivalent of Mandarin 也 before the verb. All the speakers on the CD's I used also used this falling tone for this word at the end of a sentence.

Lastly, I found Cantonese useful in explaining a few Mandarin oddities, such as 買/埋單, 的士, 菲律賓, or the character chosen for the "pi" of 啤酒.

By the way, is there really much of a difference between the Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciations of 買單? I think I might vary the vowel of 單 slightly, but don't really hear a difference between the Mandarin half-third tone and the Cantonese low rising tone in the word 買, as long as they are not said in isolation.

[roddy]

Split some posts to here.

A quick off-topic aside is fine, but if you find yourself writing entire posts off-topic, please just start another thread and link between the two. If this seems unreasonable, let us know.