Is this a good way to learn (to pronounce)?

[XiaoMa]

Hi,

i recently heard from a chinese friend that he thinks singing in chinese is much easier than speaking. I was a little bit shocked, because i thought singing besides understanding jokes is the most difficult in chinese

What is your opinion about that? And please write if you're chinese/non-chinese

byebye

xiaoma

[benotnobody]

At the outset, I'm not Chinese (well, my father maintains he's half-Hakka or something, but no-one in my family can speak the dialect; so I guess that counts as a no.)

Providing that you have the requisite musical skills and you have a reasonable vocabulary, I would imagine singing is in fact easier than speaking. In Mando-pop, the lyrics are pronounced tonelessly, in order to fit them to a melody. (This is in contrast to Canto-pop, where the tones remain more or less intact.) Thus, especially from the point of a non-native speaker, singing in Mandarin is easier than speaking.

My second point is that with most music, it is usually set at a slower tempo than that of average speech; possibly making it easier to sing than to speak.

(May I point out, regarding your subject field, singing is probably not a good way to learn proper Mandarin pronunciation, the major problem being that the words are toneless.)

Other than that, I can't think of any other logical reasons as to why this would be true. Interesting topic, by the way...

[xiaomawang]

I'm Chinese. I don't think its good to hear pop-songs to learn both Mandarin and Cantonese. What I suggest is: for tones you could listen to the VCD/CD for Tang's poems, no matter performed by child or adult. If you want to learn whole sentence thru' songs, listen to 蔡琴, 鄧麗君 or old Mandarin songs from Taiwan or China.