Best Way of Learning Pronunciation

[muyongshi]

Recently I have been looking at this and have been overwhelmed with the amount of different pronunciations there really are in Chinese. I really am unsure of how I wound up learning them all myself, and in looking at many books the patter I see is omission. Omit the funny ones and use common ones to represent a larger group of the same pronunciation for finals and initials. Basically selective teaching.

In trying to develop my own resource for doing learning pronunciation I just keep getting stuck on how to bring a comprehensive learning of pronunciation with a simple and straightforward approach together in one document that could if it was used for teaching be broken down into 3-5 separate sections.

What is everyones experience in learning pronunciations? What resources did you find the most helpful? Any suggestions on determining that which is essential and which is just stupid to teach a new person [for example you might not teach rui but would teach sui as there endings are the same and if they learn ren they would already have the initial for of r so then in theory they could combine the two later without a problem]

Let me also just add that I don't need language charts and phonetic things/explanations etc. I am trying to go for usability. Also if there is a "technical difference" in how a word is pronounced based on initial final combination but to a non-linguist it is difficult to actually hear the difference- I am not looking for a discussion of the idiosyncrasies of the language but rather a holistic, simplistic approach in looking at pronunciation.

[imron]

Presumably you are talking about beginner pronunciation, rather than general speaking of complete sentences? See here for my thoughts on how to improve pronunciation at the sentence level.

For beginners and individual words, the same theory applies. Listen to native speaker, record self, compare self with native speaker.

When trying to learn pronunciation it can be difficult to realise when you're speaking incorrectly. Even if someone else tells you, you still might not fully get what they mean. As soon you can hear your own pronunciation in all its awfulness then you can start to improve, which is why recording yourself is a very valuable tool.

[muyongshi]

I agree with you on that!

I guess I am looking at this from a written perspective. As in to put them on a page and say here are the "basic" pronunciations of chinese, here is there "sound equivalent"/how to pronounce them and that its goal would be as a foundation for them to read pinyin and quickly expand the basics into other words without having to relook at how they said the "iang" in liang as they run across qiang.

[Hofmann]

In my opinion, the best way would be to learn a spoken language from nothing, as an infant would learn, but it is very difficult to find the appropriate environment to learn the language/dialect one wants to learn, not to mention that one can't learn a second language as if it were a first language without some (however insignificant) influence of one's primary language(s).

Therefore, my second best method concerns "language charts and phonetic things/explanations etc." I don't want you to conclude that such things are impractical too quickly. Detailed study of the phonology of a language will avoid developing bad habits, and develops good pronunciation from the beginning. In the long run, and especially if one want to learn more languages, they will save time and effort.

My experience with pronunciation of Mandarin was a bit like native speakers in the beginning, but more like a foreigner in the end. First, I heard my parents and Chinese people around me speak some from of Mandarin. I had nothing with which to compare my pronunciation, and I couldn't tell that anyone was mispronouncing anything (mostly because I only understood 10% of what people said anyway). That continued until one day, I learned of Hanyu Pinyin. From that point, my study was more like a foreigner, but my pronunciation was still quite "fuzzy." That is, I didn't know what I was saying. Then one day I learned the basics of IPA, and the effort was so insignificant that I forgot when I learned it and how many minutes it took. From then on, I had a direct indication of what I would be saying, and I used the IPA for Standard Mandarin, and their representation in Pinyin, to solidify my pronunciation. After that, I found online resources (like recordings of PSC stuff) to check my pronunciation.

What I would recommend to a beginner is to first learn the basics of IPA and how it represents common consonants and vowels. This is not only helpful in getting good pronunciation of Standard Mandarin, but also in pronouncing anything without having to hear someone else say it first. Then, because Hanyu Pinyin is so popular, to learn Hanyu Pinyin and how it represents IPA. (Alternately, one can link directly from Pinyin to pronunciation later, but one should not skip the step of first linking from Pinyin to IPA to pronunciation, because without IPA, the connection is too fuzzy and prone to error.) Then, use the Pinyin as a tool to notate and read pronunciation. This might look like a lot of work at first, but in the long run, it avoids the formation of bad habits, and therefore avoids the need to correct bad habits, which, in my experience, takes a lot longer than getting it right from the start.

Edited June 29, 2009 at 08:24 AM by Hofmann

[imron]

I second the idea that language charts are useful. If you want to show your student that the -iang in liang and qiang are the same, showing them a chart of pinyin initials and finals (such as this one) is going to be very useful.

Throw in a little bit of extra theory (such as ju, qu and xu are actually jü, qü and xü, you is the same as -iu, wei is the same as -ui etc) and that should give them a good grounding.

I disagree about the IPA though. Considering the almost complete lack of materials that use it, it seems not really worth the effort - and I don't just mean effort to learn, I also mean effort mapping pinyin -> IPA everytime you encounter a new word. It might not seem like much, but it's not really necessary if you teach pinyin properly in the first place. I've never learnt it and my pronunciation seems to be doing fine.

[renzhe]

I don't have any complete answers, but I know that my teacher went through the pinyin charts in the beginning and made us chorus different initial-consonant combinations and different tones. We did quite a lot of this in the beginning.

I found this to be extremely helpful for developing an ear for Chinese sounds and especially tones. I found it somewhat boring at the time, but I haven't had too many issues with pronunciation, especially compared to fellow learners who either tried to figure out pinyin on their own, or whose courses didn't spend time going over the pronunciation in great detail at the very beginning.

The sooner you do it, the less likely you are to develop bad habits. If I were to teach someone Chinese from scratch (I know I'm totally unqualified, so don't worry), I'd start with the pinyin chart and wouldn't move on until the student could pronounce all of it correctly. And all four tones. It's not that hard, really.

The couple of things I didn't nail in the beginning are still plaguing me to this day. For example, the -u: in qu, and occasionally the -e ending. I wish I had nailed them in the beginning. A week more back then would have saved me months of fixing later.

[muyongshi]

Man my ability to express myself clearly must have just bombed!

My thoughts are exactly as renzhe and Imron have pointed out and I agree with Hoffman but not on the pronunciation standpoint.

Basically what I am saying is I want to use that type of chart and do that type of "drilling", the going over each way of saying things, practicing the initial final combos etc. Basically exactly as Renzhe's teacher did [that's how I was taught too and I feel it worked REALLY well].

But what I am trying to get out is how to do a simplified version of this. So that you are not using every single combination but using a selection of them so that in the end you are able to carry over what you've learned to be able to pronounce a "new" combination that you may not have fully studied but the individual combo's you've learned so you can put them together. Basically a simplified yet complete way of teaching those charts, with the combinations of the initials and finals.

[roddy]

To be honest I think that would be a false economy. There aren't so many combinations you can't cover them all.

But if I understand correctly you want a subset of syllables that cover all individual initials and finals, in the same way that 'the quick brown fox whatever whatever' covers all the letters of the English alphabet. So lets make that subset:

ba

po

fo

me

dai

nei

tao

lou

gan

ken

hang

zeng

cong

su

zhua

chuo

shuai

rui

wan

at this point we run out of initials and start repeating.

guang

kun

bi

zi

dia

tie

niao

liu

jian

qiang

xin

ying

jiong

qu

xue

yuan

jun

Basically just worked diagonally through this chart, jumping up to the top when necessary. I'm dubious about the value of this though. And I may have missed some, or there may be a more efficient list.

[muyongshi]

Hmm... I see what you are saying. It does seem a bit.... 费力. I guess in 3 hours you could go through the full chart, but what about if you are using the "sounds like" equivalents?

[imron]

I wouldn't even go with changing up the initials, I would use the standard way Chinese use them:

bo po mo fo

de te ne le

ge ke he

ji qi xi

zi ci si

zh ch sh

r

Then teach them to combine those with finals:

bo... -ang... bang

te... -ang... tang

etc etc.

le... -iang... liang

ne.. -iang... niang

Doing this will also help drive home the points that -iang is yang etc.

The table I linked to above has sound files for this kind of BPMF spelling for each Mandarin syllable.

So, drill the initials, drill the finals, show them they can be combined, and then let them do the rest. Test them a few days later to make sure what they're doing is sinking in and that they aren't making any horrible mistakes.