I am trying, but I can't notice any difference between these two sounds.

[jfbaro]

Hi there,

First I would like to say this forum is great and hopefully I'll be part of it, learning and helping.

I have just started learning Mandarin and after reading many tips and posts I decided BoPoMoFo will work better for me, regarding basic pronunciation. I intend to learn Pin Yin after BoPoMoFo.

I have started with this website:

http://www.mdnkids.com/BoPoMo/

It is very useful, but there are two sounds I can't differentiate: ㄊ©ㄎ(k). I have even thought the website had some kind of error. They DO sound identical to my ears (I have been using good headphones). A friend of mine, who is Taiwanese, said they are different. I felt really stupid

Can anyone help me to understand the difference?

P.S.: Please, check the sound through the link above, because I tried other resources and through these I could notice the difference.

Cheers

[li3wei1]

P.S.: Please, check the sound through the link above, because I tried other resources and through these I could notice the difference.

There's your answer. Don't rely on just one source. I find the same thing true of pinyin pronunciation tables. Sometimes one or several clips will sound strange on one site, and sure enough, they're different on other sites.

ㄊ is a 't' sound, and ㄎis a 'k' sound. I'm sure my more learned colleagues will jump in with more technical ways of saying it.

[imron]

Can anyone help me to understand the difference?

There is a difference, however on this site it's very slight. If you listen carefully though, you can hear the beginning of ㄊ is being made with the tip of the tongue against the back of top front teeth (though I'm sure the more linguistically trained will say that technically it's the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge), and the beginning of ㄎ is being made with the back of the tongue against the back of the mouth.

This is easier to notice if you pay attention to the other sounds in the same column. ㄉ ㄊ ㄋ ㄌ are all made starting with the tip of tongue against the back of the top front teeth.

ㄍ ㄎ however are made starting with a flat tongue and the back of the tongue creating creating a sound against the back of the mouth.

[lingo-ling]

ㄎ vs. ㄊ: it's basically the difference between the English sounds K and T. The problem with audio files online is they're not always crisp or clear enough.

[DespikableMi]

I have just started learning Mandarin and after reading many tips and posts I decided BoPoMoFo will work better for me, regarding basic pronunciation. I intend to learn Pin Yin after BoPoMoFo.

First, they are spelled Bopomofo (Zhuyin) and Pinyin. Second, learning both phonetic system is unnecessary and the return is not significant. Instead it is more practical to just invest your time in one of the phonetic system and start learning the writing system after the language. By the way, I recommend learning pinyin over zhuyin because pinyin is based on Latin alphabet and the system shows the phoneme also instead of just syllable.

[xiaolang]

True, I would also go for pinyin as almost all learning tools use it. You said you have a Taiwanese friend, maybe you could ask him to say the words for you and let him tell you where the tounge is while he says those sounds. First it's usually helpful to see people speak a sound and secondly, knowing the motion your tongue is supposed to be doing is also helpful (as mentioned above).

In general, though, I wouldn't worry about two sounds too much. Of course it's important and you should work on it but don't get caught up in it now, just spend a little bit of time every week, then it will get better. What is more important in my opinion is that you know which word has which sound, that way you can yourself say it correctly. The problem is, that Chinese people all have different accents, so sounds will rarely sound the way they should anyway. The best way, in my experience, to get along is to know words, know what they should sound like and in most cases you get the right one out of context.

Sounds all massively complicated but gets easier the longer you learn Chinese. Yep and the advice above is definitely good, try different sites for sound files, Wikipedia has good ones, most dictionaries do or my own site as well