Tones messed up by English stress patterns

[Sydney Matt]

Although my Chinese is getting better (well, "more okay! "), tones have been kind of left behind. I am slowly getting better, in the sense that I can hear tones reasonably accurately, and I can mostly say them fine if I have text in front of me (not necessarily pinyin, characters are no problem either if I already know the words). However, I need to work much harder on getting tones correct, especially in conversation.

What I'd like to raise here, though, is that from time to time, even when I know the correct tone for a word, I'll say it incorrectly in a sentence because I'm following the stress patterns of English, my native language. For instance, because I want to emphasise a word or two, I'll say it with that strong stress akin perhaps to a fourth tone, regardless of the actual tone of the word.

Have others encountered this? Thoughts? Suggestions? I admit it's not the biggest part of the picture as far as tones go, but it's still a component.

[navaburo]

Definitely have dealt with this one before.

My recommendation is to read up on Chinese prosody (I could maybe dig up a reference for you.). Then, listen to some dialogs of UNSCRIPTED/spontaneous/informal Mandarin speech. You will hear how half the syllables seem to drop to neutral tone and how some words are stressed. Don't use formal or scripted speech as the stress patterns get much less pronounced in that case.

The trick is that the stress in Chinese works differently than in English. You are quite right that English stress is similar to a mandarin 4th tone. The mandarin stress is more like a lengthening and loudening of the syllable plus an exaggeration of the tone. (high tone higher, 4th tone starting higher dropping lower, etc).

[lechuan]

I notice this happen a lot when I (and others) try to sound "natural". We tend to fall back on the natural (and wrong) intonations of our original language. Until you have your tones done, it's much better to sound accurate and clear than it is to sound "natural".

I have been working on "naturality" by listening to a line of dialog, repeating it (while recording), listening to the line again, listen to my recording, and keep doing that until my intonation matches. I use the Great Wall Chinese app for iPad which has 180 dialogues, with this recording/listening method built-in. You can also role-play in the dialog, replacing one of the characters with yourself, and can record and listen to the whole thing.