fix tones and accent

[chuasan]

I have a big problem with my tones. I already know how to pronounce the different tones. When reading I have no problem with them but it's different when I'm speaking. I can't seem to say the right tones when speaking. it's like there's something wrong with my tongue. my teacher told me to read aloud more often. any other advice on how to correct it?

[renzhe]

It's because you're concentrating on too many things while speaking. Unlike with non-tonal languages, your brain still needs to concentrate to produce the right tones, so as soon as you're distracted by something else (grammar, looking for the right word, improvising sentences on the go, etc.) your tones slip. It's very common, at least with me.

Another thing is that tones interact with each other, and just knowing the contours of the four tones in isolation is not enough. You need to move on to pronouncing words (with different tone combinations, like 3-4, 3-3, 2-4, 3-1, etc.) and finally phrases.

Reading aloud is more useful than it sounds. Reading the same thing over and over until it starts sounding natural. The phrases you cover like this will flow much better in speech. It will also teach you to split a sentence into meaningful blocks and pronounce things one block at a time (not one word at a time, and definitely not one character at a time, as most people start). This is the key to sounding natural, IMHO.

Other than that, recording yourself is important, and listening to it. Have a native speaker recording ready and compare your reading with the original. Keep repeating, section by section, until you are close to a native. Imron and heifeng from this forum did this, as well as Mark Rowswell and Julien Gaudfroy, so there must be something to it!

Software that might help you includes Audacity and Praat (both free). Search the forum for more threads on the same.

[chuasan]

You're right about the grammar. When I'm processing the sentences in my head, the tones turn out real bad when I say them. Ohh so I'll try to read more basic phrases. I've never recorded myself in Chinese before but I've done it with french because of hw. Thank you Renzhe I'll try to practice more.

[zhouhaochen]

try speaking slowly and pay attention to the tones. It might sound a bit strange, but thats how you get your tones better. You can start speeding up later again. I had massive problems with tones when I started.

Another thing that helped me was to move my head while speaking with the tones (up, down etc.). Which again looks strange, but helped me a lot.

[chineserelics]

Do you live in China? If so, screw the tones. Don't bother learning them, just go outside, speak to people, make a mess of what you're saying and have them correct you. Also, eavesdrop on lots of conversations and get a feel for how people say things.

For me I gave up with the tones very early on, I've been fluent now for about 3 years and I can't really tell you which words have which tones, but I speak quite "biaozhun" according to a lot of Chinese people. This is because I eavesdrop and copy, which in my opinion is the most natural way of learning to speak Chinese like a native.

If you ask a Chinese person (that isn't a teacher) what the tone is for which word, you'll notice that they don't say "third tone" straight out, they need to pause for a second, say the word out loud, then say "ah, yeah, third tone". That's because (as far as I know) they don't learn tones, they pick them up naturally, and that is what I recommend you do. So if you live in China, the world is your classroom, go outside, listen to people speaking and just copy them. That's how babies learn to speak a language.

If you don't live in China, then if you try and watch some Chinese TV shows. Try and find something like Fei Chang Wu Rao on youku and just listen to them speak. Listen out for what you can understand (don't worry if you can't understand much) and copy, copy, copy.

[zhouhaochen]

@chineserelics great to hear that listening to people and then copying them worked for you. However, for the majority of students it does now. So I would be careful with the "screw tones" argument. I could know a lot of people who are stuck and intermediate level to this day, because they "gave up on tones early" and now just cant get them right. And without tones there is just no way to reach fluency.

My personal theory still is that people who learned an instrument and have a "musical" ear do better with learning tones simply by being exposed to them. But besides personal observations have no data to back that up. Still better means just easier, doesnt mean it comes "just by listening" without any conscious effort to learn them.

[abcdefg]

This is because I eavesdrop and copy, which in my opinion is the most natural way of learning to speak Chinese like a native.

I do that too and find it helpful, though I don't think it's enough by itself. Maybe if I were six years old it would be.

Tones are so important. I'm tempted to say I think they are more important than knowing how the word looks when written with Pinyin letters. In the context of daily speech if I say a word that, for example, "is short and goes up" and has the right initial consonant, the local I'm talking with is more likely to understand or guess my meaning from context than if I say something that is spelled exactly right on paper but has the wrong tone.

[WestTexas]

chineserelics - So like, what if you need to go buy something, say a roll of tape, and before you go to the store you look up how to say the word so you can ask the people in the store where to find it. Do you just ignore the tones? Or like, what if you are watching TV and you hear a word you don't know, but you don't see the character. When you look it up, do you just type in the pinyin with no tones and hope the right word comes up?

That's because (as far as I know) they don't learn tones, they pick them up naturally, and that is what I recommend you do.

They know what tones are, and the ones who take 汉语水平测试 do study tones. This just seems like an unintuitive way to study. You know that Chinese people will almost never correct a foreigner as long as they understand the meaning, right? So how do you know if you are correct if you have no idea what the tones are supposed to be?

[Koxinga]

Learning tones and proper pronunciation in general might seem impossible in the beginning, but all it takes is a lot of practice.

What I did was reading a passage from my textbook out loud, sentence by sentence. I had asked my language partner to stop me whenever I sound like a foreigner and to point out where my mistake was. It was painful and boring in the beginning, but eventually I got much better. I spent hours just on pronunciation. I still sound like a foreigner but at least speaking became much easier for me and people actually understand most of what I say.

[renzhe]

Woohoo, another Kèluódìyàrén on here!

[chineserelics]

I would argue that many people get stuck at intermediate level and never progress because they care too much about tones. Seriously, screw studying them. That doesn't mean screw them in general, instead you just imitate.

I honestly believe that trying to perfect the tones is what makes most foreigners sound like foreigners when they try to learn Chinese. They put way too much emphasis on them and don't sound natural.

West Texas, I used to do that and it worked great. If I were to go shopping for a USB stick for example, I would first do some research in the phrase book, look up some words in the dictionary, memorise them then go out and give it a try. Say the stuff you memorised to them. If they don't understand then so what? This is all part of the process. Sound like a retard, have them stare at you like you're a retard, then point to the USB stick and they will say what it's called. Listen to how they pronounce it and copy that. Sure, you will mess it up a few times, but that's part of the learning process. Mess up to move up.

Seriously, get over the mindset of having to perfect your tones. Yes, tones are important. But don't let that distract you. If your mind is going through the process of "OK, OK, first I say wo and that's the third tone so that should sound like wooOOoo, then I say yao and that's the 4th tone so I should say that really sharply like I just banged my knee, then I should say mai and that's the third tone so I should say that like a British guy trying to say oh my in a really British accent, and then....Oh boy, what was it I wanted to say again? Screw it I'll just speak English."

That sort of mind set will distract you and you will make no progress. You will always sound like a retarded foreigner. Instead, don't try too hard to perfect the tones, that will come naturally with time and practice, so focus more on trying, experimenting, playing with the language, messing it up and being corrected. I guess what I'm really trying to get at is that tones come naturally with experience, they are just one of those things that has to wait in order to get the best results, and trying too hard to force yourself to learn them will really hinder your progress.

[roddy]

Seriously, screw studying them.

focus more on trying, experimenting, playing with the language, messing it up and being corrected.

So, screw studying them, then do lots of things that actually look an awful lot like studying. I think you're actually in agreement with most people on here. [bit that wasn't actually true removed]

I also fail to see how going out to a shop and engaging the shopkeeper in conversation is more efficient than sitting down with a good teacher and getting some solid practice in. Both are great, there's no need to say 'screw' one at the expense of the other.

Incidentally, repeated use of the word 'retarded' makes you look.... special.

[chineserelics]

I attended probably no more than 20 Chinese classes and I am now fluent. I would say about 90% of my time learning Chinese has come from self-study and practice. No, I do not claim to be amazing at languages or super intelligent. I spent 5 years studying french at school and I can only remember several phrases. I've spent the last 3 years learning Japanese and I am making extremely slow progress. Why was Chinese so different for me? Because of the environment.

I was at a very low conversational level after 3 months. By that I mean I was at a level to start engaging in conversations with random strangers, most of what they said I couldn't understand, some of what I said they couldn't understand and I was very limited in my ability to communicate, but getting to this level was extremely important. By getting to this level, I had overcome the confidence barriers, I was comfortable in experimenting, messing up and playing about with the language. People corrected my mistakes, and after so many times of being corrected I would eventually learn. People would use certain word structures that only native speakers would use, and I would eventually start to remember how they said things. I learnt that people used "ah" at the end of certain sentences, they used "de" in ways that the textbooks didn't cover. I learnt that some people say "duo'ao qian" instead of "duoshao qian". You don't learn those things in the classroom.

Seriously, if you live in China, everything outside of your apartment is a classroom. A language is a tool for use in real life. A classroom is an OK place for some people to learn, but at the end of the day you need to go out and use it in the real world. A huge part of learning a language is about getting that confidence to go out there and experiment and not be afraid of messing up. I do genuinely get annoyed with foreigners who pay so much money to go to classes in the evening, yet never go out and use their language and then complain about how they're not making any progress. Yes, I do also have a superiority complex, but my point still stands.

[chineserelics]

And Keluodiyaren, that's the sort of way I used to learn and it's very beneficial having someone correct you.

I used elementary Chinese readers books 2 and 3 to gain a more natural comprehension of Chinese. I didn't study them in a classroom, I don't really see how you can. I sat in my lounge for hours, going over each character, looking it up in the dictionary and doing so until I could remember every character in the passage and read it out. I also used Anki to store my vocabulary lists, a huge, massive, super duper help and I could not recommend it more!

As for speaking and listening, I went out and practiced in real life. Buying stuff, ordering food, asking directions, speaking to barmaids, speaking to the old ladies giving me foot massages, making friends with the shop assistants. Eventually I found an only-foreigner-in-the-company type job which gave me more opportunities to improve my Chinese. Then I met my fiancé who I didn't let speak English!

[icebear]

@chineserelics

I don't think anyone will strongly disagree with your post on the importance of immersion and practice. But keep in mind that you yourself admit that you did self-study in addition to that natural interaction/practice. Also keep in mind that not everyone, even in China, has the time or luxury of speaking in Chinese all day long; many have obligations to meet in their first language which can be very time consuming, and some aren't even in China at all (or not in China long term). In these cases tutors are helpful, studying tones can be helpful (since they aren't constantly exposed to natural speech, or corrected by others on tone mistakes).

Again, I think what you're saying is very helpful - to people in a situation that permits that kind of self-study and immersion mix.

[chineserelics]

icebear, yes you are right it was not all from interaction, I think just learning from interaction progress would be very slow, there was a lot of self study involved. But as for tones, I did not study those, those came naturally through interaction. I guess that's all I'm trying to say really, albeit in a very opinionated way!

And as for time, yeah, I had a lot of time then. Not so much now unfortunately!

[roddy]

Actually, chuasan, have you had a nice long read of this - a ton of good info in there.

Chineserelics, you're turning this into a bit of a 'how I learned Chinese' topic. You're welcome to start a new topic for that.

[chineserelics]

Apologies for getting carried away. I get quite irate about this subject. I'll let you guys carry on.

[anonymoose]

Yeah, and post a recording of yourself to give the rest of us something to aspire to.

[renzhe]

Since this topic is about fixing accent and tones, I think that posts on how to fix accent and tones are on-topic.

For my part, every single person I've seen who got this right has spent a considerable effort on accent and tones in order to get there.

There is something to be said for not worrying about this ALL THE TIME and making sure not to neglect immersion and conversation, but if you claim that "screwing tones" will result in good pronunciation, I'd like to hear a sample.