I can't hear the tones

[Ben Pomeroy]

So I have been self studying for a few months now. My main way of studying is Chinese class 101 mp3s/ PDFs . I also enter the vocabulary into Pleco and use that for flash cards. I think I can follow along with the podcasts ok but I am having trouble with the tones on the flashcard part.

I set Pleco up with tone practice and auto play the audio. So I hear the word and have to assign the tones to the word. I am terrible at this. I can only get the answer right about ten percent of the time. And it's not just stuff like mistaking 4th tone with 5th tone, but I am confusing 2nd and 4th and 1st and 3rd! It's really discouraging. It might have to do with the audio files in Pleco but i feel like I should be doing a little bit better.

So now some questions.

For people who have studied for a while, how long did it take you to really be able to hear the tones consistently?

What are some good listening techniques for discerning the tones?

Are some people just not able to do it? Should I just give up ?

I know this is something that is brought up a lot so thanks for your time.

[Shelley]

This is probably the most difficult part of learning Chinese, but not impossible:)

I have no ear for music, I can't sing in tune to save my life. i thought this would be a problem, but its not.

All i can really say is it does come with practice. this may be longer than you think. Don't despair, keep at it. Practice, practice, practice and practice some more:)

Do lots of listening to anything chinese, even if you don't understand what's being said, just to tune your ear to the tones.

At first i would do this and then after 20 minutes to half an hour I would change to something I knew I would understand and listen to that. it was much easier to hear the tones then.

Listening and reading at the same time so you know what tone it should be also helps.

It does get easier.

You have only been at it for a few months, this is only the start of your journey:) Give it time.

Maybe you could try a better quality than mp3, sometimes they can be lacking dynamic range.

Good luck

[thechamp]

I think it takes quite a long time before you get it right all the time....and I still make mistakes but only if someone's talking at native speed, not study material. Don't worry about it too much but keep trying. People will still pretty much understand you when you're talking basic chinese.

The other day after talking to someone for about 15 minutes they said 'women yingai baohu lianxi' which means 'we should keep in contact' but 'lianxi' means contact or practice. I heard 'practice' and thought he was having a subtle dig about my Chinese. i.e 'we should keep practicing'

[tooironic]

I think you mean 保持聯繫 (bǎochí liánxì). 保護 (bǎohù) means "protect".

I second Shelley's great advice.

The reality is it may take a couple of years of studying Mandarin before your listening gets to a decent level. But don't forget that Chinese people face much the same problem learning English too - though often I've noticed their weakness lies more speaking and grammar than listening skills per se.

[imron]

So I hear the word and have to assign the tones to the word. I am terrible at this.

How well can you pronounce the 4 tones?

If you can pronounce them accurately and well, listening to them becomes much easier. If you're interested in getting some open and honest feedback feel free to post a sample in this thread.

[Guest realmayo]

I understand the wish to optimise how you learn which I guess has prompted you to focus on tones with flashcards, but can I suggest focusing more on how tones are heard in context? I'm not talking so much about how they change in different situations, but simply that -- for me at least -- getting to grips with tones was a slow and difficult process that was firmly part of my overall progress (or otherwise!) in the language. I'm sure that repeated exposure to hearing sentences of Chinese will help you with your tones as long as you know what the sentences mean.

So how about: getting a Chinese text for which you have good quality audio (a podcast or a reading comprehension book, for instance), read a chunk, look up the words you need, make sure you understand that chunk perfectly, and then listen to the corresponding audio: first listen for the meaning, listen to it enough that you can understand it without really needing to read along, and then start listening out for the tones. You will know what the tones should be, because you've read and understood the text. The more of this you do the better your overall listening ability will become, and tones are just one aspect of listening/speaking, so your ability to distinguish tones should increase too.

This worked for me but tones are hard! Don't be discouraged (and that kind of flashcarding can be very de-motivating).

[ThePeaMonster]

There are two skills involved and two possible problems - either you can't hear them at all, or you just can't assign the correct numbers to them. From multiple words with different tones, can you pick the right one even without context? If you can, you can hear the tones and you just have to learn which sound equals to each tone number.

If you can't hear them at all, you should start training on minimal pairs that differ only in tones. It's not too good to start with pronunciation or numbering them IMO, as these two skills depend on the ability to hear them.

[Ben Pomeroy]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I feel a bit more motivated now. The audio on the flashcards are kind of low quality I guess. I can do better with podcasts ( not 100% maybe 40% if I really listen for it).

I think for most languages getting the basics of the pronunciation is like really easy so I guess I just sort of misjudged the challenge that Chinese really is.

Thanks again

[thechamp]

Indeed I do tooironic. God I hate Chinese

[alanip]

To Ben,

For a beginner of learning Chinese, don't learn it too fast otherwise you can't embed the words/right tones in your brain.

Learning deeply is so important and what you should do is to listen some material you can understand at least 80%, and keep listening to them for a while, not just once or twice.

Learning tones should be easy and automatic, but one of the biggst problems Chinese learners( or even foreign language learners) is they don't have enough repetition for the words they learnt, the memory is too shallow and you may just knw the meaning of them, but you can't understand and use them instantly, particularly in listening and speaking.

I think more repetitions can definitely help you.

[ZhongGuoML]

Try listening and repeating same pinyin but with different tones can help. For example,

包 - 包子 bāo zi

薄 - 薄饼 báo bǐng

饱 - 吃饱了 chī bǎo le

爆 - 爆米花 bào mǐ huā

[driftman]

drink beer - that always helps.

Otherwise try speaking slowly and move your head.

Forget about hearing them, I cannot hear the different tones to this day.

[Wang7]

I'm an advanced beginner, and after building a respectable foundation in hanzi and pinyin, I'm focusing on listening comprehension. This has become the most difficult part of my learning process. Although I am mindful of stressing tones when I speak, I find it difficult distlinguishing tones on audio files (sans transcript), particularly if there's a continuous string of first, and second tone words in a sentence. Integrated Chinese (L1,Pt.2) listening comprehension workbook audio has great normal speed (30 - 45 sec.) clips, and I struggle (play/pause/replay). However, when using the Making Connections text the difficulty increases mightly. Therefore, I think I'm qualified to respond to only one of your questions; "what are some good listening techniques for discerning the tones?" Unfortunately, it involves hard work and a measure of frustration: listen to as many normal speed audio files with vocabulary that you are familar with, or better yet, find a language exchange partner and acquire your listening skills that way.

Jia you!

I know this is something that is brought up a lot so thanks for your time.

[roddy]

Ben, have you made any progress with the tones?

[smurese]

So I hear the word and have to assign the tones to the word. I am terrible at this. I can only get the answer right about ten percent of the time. And it's not just stuff like mistaking 4th tone with 5th tone, but I am confusing 2nd and 4th and 1st and 3rd! It's really discouraging... Are some people just not able to do it? Should I just give up ?

For those who think they might be "Chinese-tone-deaf" (including @driftman above) and have tried the standard advice as offered by the answers above, here's a radical thought: if you think you can't hear the tones, what if you could actually SEE a visual representation of those tones as they were being uttered by the speaker!!?

There are some universities, including San Diego State University, that use acoustic speech analysis processing software such as the opensource Wavesurfer as part of their Chinese instruction. The crux seems to be the "pitch contour" of the words formed by the speaker. Check out the Wavesurfer User Manual for their Chinese language lab, and have a look at what tonal Chinese can "look" like on page 3 of this document.

I found Wavesurfer via the Free Software page on my LearnchineseOK.com Chinese learning resources website. (Wavesurfer was created at the Royal Institute of Technology of Sweden, KTH!) If anyone is looking for some online audio tone drills, there are at least three separate sources listed for that on the "Pronunciation" page there.

I've found Wavesurfer mentioned once on Chinese-Forums, in this old "Arghhh Tones" thread. All the comments are quite helpful - and take particular note of the very informative and eye-opening extra-long piece by @Altair: even "tone deaf" people learn and use tones in their own language, and they didn't even know it!

[sleepy eyes of death]

I'll most definitely second the recommendation on tone drills. Work in pairs, don't try practicing tones in isolation too much, be it listening or pronouncing them. Sinosplice has a set of drills that are quite helpful. There is an iOS app that helped me tremendously, by far the best thing I found for tone practice. For the pronounciation part of it, it makes use of the technology described by smurese, or at least I think it does. I mentioned it in the apps thread at the Resources forum. Lastly, there is also a set of drills at Lingomi that I like even better than the one at Sinosplice, because of the way it's organized. It's a little short, though. This one here: http://lingomi.com/blog/2011/03/practice-these-20-words-for-awesome-chinese-tones/

[phannahan44]

You should definitely not give up! Chinese, as with all things, comes with practice. It's a long journey, good luck!

[evasiege]

Tones are beast. Don't worry about it. As others have said, most people overestimate the importance of the tones and underestimate context. When listening to someone speak 1000mph in their local dialect, context is all you will able to rely on. Same with speaking to a lesser degree.

[Friedrich]

I manage to say them by now. I do not think I will EVER hear them

[Angelina]

Friedrich, how can you pronounce them properly without having good listening skills? I have no problem to understand what Chinese people say (in everyday conversations), but I always forget about the tones when speaking.