Initial frustrations - help with going from Japanese to Chinese

[Zorlee]

Hi guys!

I'm sorry about all my newbie threads lately, but here I go again.
I've been studying Japanese intensely for four years, two of them being in Japan. I found a really efficient way of studying Japanese by myself, and was fluent within 2 years of self-study, passing the JLPT N1 (the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test) after 2,5 years of studying.
My method was simple and really efficient:

- Find a word / phrase I don't know
- Look up everything needed in order to understand it / read it
- Enter into Anki
- Repeat x 15000 +

That + immersion = extremely fast results.

Now, I'm not saying this to brag. Quite the opposite really... I came out from my Japanese studies with a really cocky attitude thinking "if I can do Japanese, then I can do any language".
Well, that was before I tried tackling Chinese.

I've been studying Chinese for some weeks now, including 5 private tutor sessions via Skype.
My impressions:

My method for learning Japanese does NOT work with Chinese. Why?
Tones.
If I find a word I don't know, I can easily look it up and enter it into Anki. But! Since I'm not a native speaker, I'm not sure if I pronounce it correctly when I review it. Which leads me to thinking stuff like "what if I'm reviewing this incorrectly? What if I'm ingraining bad habits when doing these reviews?" etc etc.
That being said, I'm a musician and believe I have a pretty good ear, but these insecurities just makes this initial phase of learning Chinese extremely frustrating.
If I focus a lot on tones now, is it possible to master tones with confidence before one becomes fluent?
I've heard some people saying that they mastered tones very quickly, while other people said it took years.
Tones for me right now is like this big stone blocking me from getting efficient studying done, because I don't feel I can comfortably work on my Chinese without a native speaker listening to me. And if I have to get babysit every step of the way by a private tutor, this is gonna get expensive real fast...

I would love to hear some advice based on your experience with the initial frustrations with mandarin, especially in regard to tones and pronunciation.

Thank you guys
Sincerely,
Z

[陳德聰]

If you think of tones as just being part of the pronunciation of words (which they are), then maybe it will help you justify spending some extra time now to at least be able to produce them properly for inputting them into Anki.

A lot of learners don't bother with being able to do them properly at the beginning, and then have extremely accented Mandarin even at higher levels when they are starting to use quite professional terminology.

 

There are only 4 tones. Take a week to get them figured out on basic words and make sure you can produce all syllables in any tone at will, then off you go on your flashcarding adventure (you can record yourself saying the word when you input it into Anki can't you?)

[Hofmann]

Not to point out the obvious, but I hope you've read this before.

[imron]

If you are doing it right, it should only take a couple of weeks to get a good basic understanding of tones - that is being able to hear them in isolation, and produce them in isolation.

 

Yes, there's a lot more to it than that, but that will all come over time.  The important thing is to give yourself a good base to start with, and then apply that base to words as you learn them.

 

You don't need to be able to do it for every combination of initial+final, just start with a few simple groups - mā  má  mǎ  mà , bā  bá  bǎ  bà , tā  tá  tǎ  tà etc, until you you have a good grasp of how to differentiate the tones clearly, then work to apply that to new words.
 
As 陳德聰 mentioned, you need to see tones as an intrinsic part of the sound, so rather than thinking sound + tone, it should always be a single distinct unit, with differences in tones being just as different as differences in vowels.  Once you get to that point, you're at a place where you can start to move on to other things.
 
It's been my experience that people who say tones take years to learn are people who never treated tones seriously at the beginning of their learning, and then had to spend large amounts of time correcting problems.

[tysond]

This is relevant:  http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2008/06/25/learning-curves-chinese-vs-japanese

[Lu]

My studies in uni started with a week or two of pronunciation classes, and I think that is a good way to start. Some people here manage to learn Chinese all by themselves, but personally I think you really need a teacher at the beginning, for pronunciation and some grammar issues. Once you have the basics, you can build on that independently. If you don't have money for a professional teacher, perhaps you can try and find a language partner? They can't necessarily explain everything, but should definitely be able to help you with pronunciation.

 

As an aside, I'm quite surprised that you found Japanese so much easier than Chinese. Japanese on my list of 'languages I'm never going to try learning because they're just too damn complicated', for all its grammar and different levels of politeness and all.

[Tamu]

Tones are frustrating. Foreigners even at advanced levels slip often. Expressing emotions in sentences is also so hard, because your own tone-pattern of indicating anger, joy, surprise, etc, is so deeply ingrained that you feel like in a straight jacket without it.

 

But as everyone here says, in isolation - for single syllables and 2-syllable words - it really isn't so bad. I'm not expert at all, but for single words I could almost always say it right after just a short time of practicing tones. Chinese has lots of hurdles, but the pronunciation of the tones in the first weeks shouldn't be one of them.  Especially if you're a musician, you'll pick it up easily. 

 

People already responded to your earlier thread with ideas, but here are free suggestions:

 

- Sinosplice's tone pair drill is great: http://www.sinosplice.com/learn-chinese/tone-pair-drills

 

- You can get the tone pair drill on Anki to practice listening, speaking, reading, and other combination you want: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1306530162

 

- You can get a program to record yourself saying words and compare your tone to that of a native speaker. You see your tone pattern compared to the native speaker's, which I think is incredibly helpful for really gauging your speech.  Particularly as a musician, it could be very useful for you.  It gives an evaluation of whether you're "understandable" for each word. It's perhaps a bit strict and lots of parameters have to be set right, plus background noise can screw it up a bit. But the overall idea is good and is a free way to get unlimited hours of advice on how to improve your tones.:
http://speakgoodchinese.org/

 

- This last one is obvious, but there are many Chinese speakers who will do language exchange with you for free online.  Talk English with them for 30 minutes. Then for your 30 minutes, have them work with you on tones.  You can use the Hacking Chinese tone drill:

http://www.hackingchinese.com/a-smart-method-to-discover-problems-with-tones/

You're using italki already to find tutors, no?  You can use it or lots of other sites to find language exchange partners. Working on tones might be boring for most people, but there are so many English learners that you'll be bound to find some who think it's fun to listen to you say mā má mǎ mà ma for hours every week :)

 

[btw, If you want inspiration as a self-studying musician: google Julien Gaudfroy, a musician who self-studied his way to an incredible level].

[roddy]

I think a bit of a pronunciation blitz early on is great. The problem is that often it stops there. You're unlikely to get it spot-on right away, and the key is, I think, slow and steady incremental improvements. 

[PBolchover]

Tones are definitely important.  In fact, I've heard it said that the tone is the most important this that a Chinese person listens to when they listen to speaking.  If you get the tone right, and the rest wrong, you might be understand; but if you get the tone wrong, but the rest right, you almost certainly won't be understood.

 

I would recommend getting a good theoretical understanding of the tones, trying them as well as you can, and definitely memorise them as part of the pronunciation of the vocabulary.  If you make any mistakes at the beginning, then this will definitely make it easier for you to correct later on.

 

As a musician, I recommend that you think about each tone in terms of musical notes.  (Get a simplistic diagram showing how the pitch of each tone varies, and practice slowly with the pitches.)  I've noticed, that at least to my ear, the volume changes as well, so for example second tone actually increases in volume more than it increases in pitch.

 

As an experienced Anki user, I recommend that you use the power of customising the notes vs cards to suit your study regime.  As an example, I have the following note types (which helps me to ensure that I remember the tones as well as the basic sounds).

 Characters:  Hanzi => Pinyin + Meaning;  Hanzi + Meaning => Pinyin (with correct tone); [Optional: Pinyin + Meaning => Hanzi]

 Vocabulary: Pinyin => Meaning; Meaning => Pinyin; Hanzi => Pinyin + Meaning; Hanzi + Meaning => Pinyin (with correct tone)

 Sentences: Pinyin => Meaning; Hanzi => Meaning; [Optional: Meaning => Pinyin]

 

        Paul

[Guest realmayo]

You're unlikely to get it spot-on right away, and the key is, I think, slow and steady incremental improvements. 

 

 

Agree, except that I find with almost anything to do with languages, progress comes in bursts followed by plateaus -- for me that has been true of the various stages so far of "getting" tones.

[Demonic_Duck]

1) Remember that they're just one part of pronunciation, as 陈德聪 says.

2) To that end, don't think of e.g. 马 as pronounced "ma", and with a third tone, think of it as pronounced mǎ. If you misremember it as "mà", don't think "I remembered the pronunciation but forgot the tone", think "I forgot the pronunciation".

3) Equally, as they are a part of pronunciation, don't neglect other aspects thereof (sh/x distinction, u/ü distinction etc.) I know some people with decent-ish Chinese but whose overall pronunciation sounds really awkward/wrong to me. They'll say 学习 as shuí sh-í (where sh-í is the sh initial coupled with the yi final), yet they seem to think their only pronunciation problem is tones.

4) Good luck!

[Zorlee]

Wow, thank you guys SO much for your replies. It really means a lot to me.
I have been on the edge of just giving up after all these initial problems and frustrations, but I'm gonna try my best for a couple of months at least and see if things get better, or at least if I can get into a "groove". If I remember correctly, I struggled a lot with remembering readings and pronunciation in the start-up phase with Japanese as well, but the difference was that I got into a groove really fast and had 100% confidence in my method. This time around I need more help from natives, at least now in the beginning, so that can make me feel insecure from time to time, but by reading through all the posts above I realized that it wasn't Chinese in itself that felt over-whelming, just my extremely high expectations of getting things right from the get-go. I guess I just have to keep calm and enjoy the process, even now in the beginning when I mess up all the time
I guess learning Chinese can help me grow as a human being as well, as I constantly struggle with perfectionism getting the better of me, so remaining calm, relaxed and joyful through these frustrations might just turn out to become a good life-lesson!

Again, THANK YOU

[Guest realmayo]

I have been on the edge of just giving up after all these initial problems and frustrations

 

In times of trouble, I head to this post: http://blog.thelinguist.com/confidence-and-trust-in-language-learning

 

But I have confidence. I have the absolute knowledge, that if I keep exposing myself to the language, it will become clearer and clearer. Things that I keep forgetting will eventually start to stick. I have done it so often before, I just trust my brain. I know that with enough exposure the language will become a part of me.

 

The same is true of my efforts to maintain the other three languages. I just have to have the discipline to continue. I know my efforts will be rewarded.

 

This the confidence that I now have, and which I did not have over 40 years ago, when I first started learning languages. In those days I tried harder to deliberately learn things, and got easily frustrated by what I forgot or did not understand. Today, I am not at all concerned by these obstacles because I trust my brain, and have confidence, the confidence that comes from experience. I just have to stay the course.

 

 

[imron]

I guess learning Chinese can help me grow as a human being as well, as I constantly struggle with perfectionism getting the better of me, so remaining calm, relaxed and joyful through these frustrations might just turn out to become a good life-lesson!

 

I like this quote, from David Moser:

 

Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a five-year lesson in humility". I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility.