Learning Chinese -- A roller coaster

[chrix]

Yes, taylor04, there's a nice article here discussing some research on the topic of "stressed and unstressed tones": http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2008/12/10/toward-better-tones-in-natural-speech However, even unstressed syllables do have some kind of tone contour, albeit much weaker than the stressed ones. So you still need to be sure of all the tones (I guess this will be a process, because especially in intermediate, where your vocabulary will expand greatly through reading, you will not necessarily know all the tones, so you have to play a lot of catch-up here..)

Agree, Wushijiao. I think there's at least three important steps:

1. the basics. Practice the tones just on the syllable level.

2. the combination of tones: not only sandhi, but also the combinations of all tones with each other.

3. the stressed and unstressed tones as in the article above, plus some more prosody: intonation training.

Any suggestions at what stages these steps should occur?

[wushijiao]

I'd also add that I'm not advocating that you should do no tone work. But, I can't say that I've ever gained much by doing tone work in isolation. Maybe it's just me.

What has really helped me is to do some listening for tone drills with audio materials. I love the show 中国焦点 (formerly 中国丛谈). If I were a Chinese teacher, here's what I'd do:

1) Transcribe about 20-30 seconds of the show into characters and pinyin.

2) Teach students needed vocab so that they can understand clip, and it's meaning.

3) Have students listen to the audio clip once or twice.

4) Listen again, and have students see which words are really stressed by the speaker. Come to consensus on this as class.

5)Re-listen to clip and just pay attention to those tones.

6) Then notice how the tones behave that come before the stressed tone. I've said that, boxing-wise, I kind of think that they behave like a mis-direction punch before a powerful uppercut. In other words, I'd get the students to think about the relationship between the powerful tones and the weak tones.

7) Have students imitate the tones, words, and then sentences as close to how the speaker said it as possible.

(Note: this has all been well described here). (I see chrix linked to this as well!)

This type of thing could be done in the middle stages.

[taylor04]

I'd probably list it somewhat as

Level 1

1. the basics. Practice the tones just on the syllable level.

Level 1-2, either would be a good place, and also tones in basic words such as 我们 instead of a third and second tone its a third and fifth, but as far as I'm aware there is no rule for these but rather the word (please correct me if wrong)

2. the combination of tones: not only sandhi, but also the combinations of all tones with each other.

No level, this isn't a skill that will be developed at any particular stage but rather through direct experience with the language and speaking. It could be stage one where you're imitating Chinese speakers, or stage 5 where you just "know" what tones are important

3. the stressed and unstressed tones as in the article above, plus some more prosody: intonation training.

[wushijiao]

I'd say your outline is about right, taylor04.

In the middle stages, you could also throw in 朗读 practice as well!

[chrix]

But wasn't wushijiao just outlining a type of exercise for level 3? So taylor04 says it can't be learned but wushijiao says it should be practiced? Maybe I'm just confused

I really like the way this thread has been going. And thank you, taylor04, for continuously updating the first post, it's an unenviable task

[taylor04]

Anything can be learned, I just mean that someone isn't going to sit down and teach you, nor is there any book on it (I'm assuming:mrgreen:). Personally I think the only way you can master it is through thousands of hours of subconscious practice as in, conversations, tv, movies, etc. The practice wushijiao mentions is great for building a foundation, but without the subconscious practice it won't be much use. You need to be able to speak rapidly and fluently before trying to cut out some tones, which is actually another skill I should add sometime...

As a metaphor, you learned piano and have mastered a song by Chopin. I know, you should be proud of yourself! Anyways, there are many many ways to play that song. You could play all the notes with little strength (no tones) or pound those keys as hard as possible (perfectly pronounce ever single tone). But neither of these are natural and are hard on the ears. A true pianist "feels" how to play each note, some quiet, some loud, but they all flow together and bring feelings out in the listener. Being a true pianist should be our goal, finding that "flow" with our tones, and as with any pianist, they express their song in different ways and are never able to play the same piece exactly the same twice.

[renzhe]

On the other hand, I doubt it's possible to get it down completely in Stage 1.

Of course not. But you should at least have a handle on what the tones sound like, and at least have a handle on the tones of the most common words you use.

Unless you come from a tonal language (and probably even then), you'll be correcting tone mistakes for quite a while. It's normal. But that's why it's even more important to develop an appreciation for tones early, so you can hear your mistakes, and how your pronunciation differs from a native speaker's.

[anonymoose]

You could play all the notes with little strength (no tones) or pound those keys as hard as possible (perfectly pronounce ever single tone). But neither of these are natural and are hard on the ears. A true pianist "feels" how to play each note, some quiet, some loud, but they all flow together and bring feelings out in the listener.

I agree with you. But I think "pounding those keys" is a necessary stage to go through before acquiring the "feel".

[taylor04]

Of course the pounding on the keys is a stage we all go through, or hardly playing them. I picked up the piano and learned for about a year and my music was "monotone", its something you can only get after learning so much, and while it can be taught it's more something the pianist has to feel for himself.

[abcdefg]

But I think "pounding those keys" is a necessary stage to go through before acquiring the "feel".

At one point last year I decided everything out of my mouth was going to have a real emphatic tone: maybe the wrong tone, but by Jove it wasn’t going to just all be hesitant and neutral. I can’t swear it really helped my speech that much, but it felt pretty good.

I did find that people were more apt to help me informally by correcting my tone mistakes on the spot. If I just mumbled in "foreigner monotone" they were less likely to intervene.

Edited December 15, 2009 at 02:34 AM by abcdefg

[renzhe]

This is my current strategy, abcdefg. I think my tones were starting to get sloppy, and I was sprinkling the neutral tone around far too liberally.

I don't want that to turn into a habit, so I'll exaggerate the tones for a while.

[taylor04]

Sorry it took so long to update. I just finished my finals on Friday and have been getting ready for Christmas. I rewrote the op and cut a lot of details out. It was becoming way too long.

[Sarevok]

some points on prosody...

At our uni, there is a huge emphasis placed on this particular aspect of Chinese language. It is the influence of professor Oldrich Svarny, who was once teaching there (he is now retired) and who devoted his entire life to research in this area. We were all required to take a 4 semesters long mandatory course in Chinese prosody in order to acquire a solid foundation in this. Although I am no expert in this field and most of professor Svarny's theories are not applicable without a proper study material (written by himself and available only in Czech), there are still some points worth mentioning...

He differentiates 7 types of what he calls "prominence" (a quality inherent to syllables, every syllable in a sentence belongs to one of these types) in this order (from the most prominent to the least prominent):

Emphasized tonic syllable (always stressed)

Tonic syllable

- further differentiated to stressed and unstressed

"Weakened" tonic syllable

- further differentiated to stressed and unstressed

Atonic syllable

- further differentiated to neutralized (syllables which lost their original tone, but can potentially recover it under certain circumstances) and non-tonic (syllables which are always pronounced without tone)

(He actually doesn't use the word "stress" but another one, for which I couldn't find a proper English translation... I think it could be compared to the primary and secondary stress in English, but that's just IMO)

A distinctive characteristic of a prominent (or "stressed") syllable is its length, they are pronounced as longer than less prominent ones (the tone is always more apparent on longer syllables).

He describes the rhythm of a Chinese sentence as a series of syllables alternating between prominent and less prominent ones. There are also certain rhythmic patterns which can be observed, most notably the one, which he calls the "acronymic rhythm". This is not easily explainable for somebody who is not a native speaker of Czech, but I'll try to explain it nonetheless. Professor Svarny also studied ancient Greek and found out that the rhythmic patterns of poems in this language are quite similar to modern spoken Chinese. He also found out, that the pronunciation of acronyms in Czech also follows a similar pattern, hence the term "acronymic rhythm".

Disyllabic acronyms in Czech are always pronounced with the second syllable more prominent than the first. This could be extended to disyllabic Chinese words, which (according to 冯胜利, author of Expressions of Written Chinese) could be called "prosodic words" and constitute a minimal prosodic unit of Chinese language.

Trisyllabic acronyms (or Chinese words) are pronounced as 2-3-1 (1 being the most prominent syllable, 3 being the least prominent, usually falling under the category of "weakened" or "atonic" syllables). Quadrisyllabic acronyms (or words or 词组) then follow a pattern of 2-3-3-1. And so on, the most prominent syllables are always the first and the last one (with the last one being slightly more prominent than the first).

Chinese sentence could be then segmented to certain "rhytmical chunks" which can have slight pauses between them and usually follow the above mentioned patterns. In his dictionary and textbook, both accompanied by audio, professor Svarny uses his own transcription method (based on pinyin), which includes various diacritic marks to indicate the prominence of syllables, boundaries of "rhytmical chunks", pauses and such. The transcription used in his example sentences is always based on the concrete audio recording and we were required to study those - learn those sentences by heart, trying to imitate the audio recording and paying attention to the rhythm (identifying the "chunk boundaries", realizing which syllable in a "chunk" is the most prominent and pronouncing it as such...)

One of many conclusions that can be drawn is that if you mispronounce a tone on a prominent syllable, it will be always noticed and Chinese listener will immediately know that something is not right. If you mispronounce it on a "weakened" syllable, it is no big deal and it will probably go unnoticed. Only thing that's left is the identification of the correct syllables with high degree of prominence Which is what Svarny's theory and research are all about...

As I said in the beginning, I am no expert in this area, I just try to apply those rules (there is much more to it and it couldn't be all squeezed into one post), but I don't know how good I am at explaining them. Hope this post is at least a bit helpful...

EDIT: a typo or two...

Edited December 29, 2009 at 09:13 PM by Sarevok

[renzhe]

It's very interesting in any case.

There certainly seems to be something akin to stress in Mandarin, and a tone mistake is not always as obvious, depending on how prominent the syllable is.

[eya323]

Having lurked in this forum as an un-registered user for a few months, I decided to register today to get help with my current step in the roller coaster ride.

My problem is that I am in the depressed stage and feel like I am not really improving...just staring at a massive dictionary, wondering if I'll ever be able to read that copy of Harry Potter I bought in Beijing...

I'm no stranger to language learning. I am a native English speaker and speak, read, and write French and German fluently. I had a brief love affair with Modern Standard and Egyptian Arabic, and can speak and read at an elementary level.

My Chinese learning, though, is following the roller coaster pattern--which is completely unlike how I've felt when learning other languages.

I've been getting one hour per week of Chinese instruction with a private tutor for three years. The first book I completed was Yong Ho's Beginner Chinese. Next, I completed Ho's Intermediate Chinese. Around that time, I started the Zhongwen series, which was basic but helped me review vocabulary and increase my reading comprehension, and am now on Book 5. (On a related note, I haven't seen this series listed in any threads yet. Does anyone else use it?) My teacher and I use a DVD version of CCTV's Chinese for Children in class-- I memorize the dialogues both spoken and written. She also has me memorize Chinese poems and recite them at her Chinese school's Spring Festival and New Year's celebrations. For fun, I watch bad CCTV programs, order kungfu movies on Netflix, and workout to silly Mandopop. I listen to the news in Mandarin each day, but rarely know what they are talking about beyond a general gist (but I think it helps me with my own conversational rhythm and pronunciation/tones).

Last summer, my teacher and I spent two weeks together in China doing our own immersion program. It was great and by the end I could hold my own in conversations on a variety of topics. I was beginning to dream in Chinese and my conversations were flowing much more naturally.

When I returned, I became depressed. Everyday, my memory leaked characters and I began to forget the idioms I had learned. Since I am married and my husband and I have fabulous jobs in the states, I can't really leave the US for China permanently (yet), so it seems like my Chinese will never be fluent.

I am stuck at some beginner/intermediate level where I am forgetting "old" words and grammar points, probably from lack of review of old material. Although I've made tons of my own flashcards, I don't really use them after I've taken tests.

I just started using Anki and have an HSK sentence deck that seems pretty helpful.

But...I want to be able to make progress without feeling like I'm forgetting everything that I have learned in the past. Any suggestions? (beyond "use flashcards" and "listen to podcasts".)

Thanks-- and great thread!

[Daan]

Welcome to CF, eya323! Always good to see new faces here.

Your problem sounds similar to the one most of us have experienced at some point in time during our studies of Chinese. Still, I'm going to be that guy and say "use those flashcards", since honestly there's not much of a point in making progress when you haven't got the basics down yet Of course, you should not overdo it either, but you do have to strike a balance between reviewing old stuff and learning new stuff. But I agree it is frustrating to have the idea that you're not making a lot of progress.

The problem might be that Harry Potter is still a bit too difficult, which can quickly make reading Chinese exhausting rather than fun. How many new words do you generally come across on a page? When reading, I always underline new words, only to look them up when I'm done reading the page. I use "no more than 20 new words/page" as a rule of thumb: if there are more, the text is likely to be too difficult for me, and I should probably be reading something easier. Have you considered reading children's books? That might sound boring, but they're a great way to reinforce vocabulary and getting a lot of exposure without wearing you down

Others more qualified than myself will certainly be posting some more suggestions.

[taylor04]

You could always look for Chinese friends, most of my friends in the US are Chinese. Also, there are website like sharedtalk.com that you can find language partners on. It sounds to me that you are putting the time into studying but don't have the environment. You just need to find more ways to use and practice Chinese.

[Chinadoog]

''For modern texts, the most frequent 1,000 characters cover 89.14% of all written material. The next most frequent 1,000 characters cover a further 7.99% of all material. The next 1,000 only an extra 2.05% and the next 1,000 only 0.56%.''

So does anyone know where to see a list of those most frequent 1,000 characters?

Thanks

[imron]

Yes. Those figures are based on the frequency statistics for modern Chinese texts provided here.

[renzhe]

Xiaoma Cidian has a nice browseable list of them too, arranged into blocks of 500. Useful for making lists, etc.

I think that we've all been through the desperation stage. It is usually the folks who fight their way through this stage that end up learning the language later.

My advice is to set small, measurable goals, and to stick to them. It is the combination of little steps over a longer period of time that brings success with Chinese. Set goals for how many characters you should know at the end of each month, then evaluate, revise your goals, and keep going. A flashcard program using SRS will really help you there. Do the same for words. Do the same for reading. Set a goal of 20 (or 50, or 100) pages to read per month and try to do it. Set a number of episodes of a TV show you want to watch per week.

These things are very easy to measure, unlike lofty goals like "improve my spoken Chinese this year". After a year, you will definitely see progress, and you might find that you're moved beyond your sticking point.

Reading your first book in Chinese is a HUGE milestone. Don't feel bad that it doesn't work the first time you try it. Keep learning vocabulary, and reading all material that is within your abilities, and it will come eventually.