More Advice for Learning Chinese: Possibly Controversial

[gato]

If the debate is about spoken Chinese rather than written pinyin, you'd have to compare spoken Chinese to make a valid comparison.

Try comparing the same text

(1) spoken all in the first tone, with the right word combination;

(2) spoken with the correct tone, a single character at a time, with a pause in between;

(3) spoken with the first tone, a single character at a time, with a pause in between.

See which of the three is the most comprehensible.

I'd argue that tones are very important. Even Chinese natives try to remember the tone when learning new words. It's just that what is remembered is the sound of the words, with tone being a component of the sound, rather than the pinyin. When one needs to write out the pinyin, one then tries to figure out the pinyin and tone from the remembered sound.

[Nathan Mao]

I've got an even better method of testing this notion out.

The intent is to gauge the relative importance of an aspect to comprehension.

Take a paragraph of Chinese.

First, change all the initials around. Read it aloud to a native Chinese speaker. How much will they comprehend? I'd say zero percent, but certainly not more than 10 percent.

Now take the original text and swap all the vowel sounds. Agan, read it aloud to a native Chinese speaker. How much will they comprehend? I'd say still zero percent, but certainly not more than 10 percent.

The third time, take the original text and only randomize the character order. This will test how important grammar is. Read it to a native Chinese speaker. They might get an idea of what the topic is, depending on how complex the topic is. If you retain word groupings, it would be even easier. Say, 30 percent comprehension for the complete character randomization, 50-60 percent for the retained word grouping randomization.

Finally, go back to the original text and randomize the tones, then read it to a native speaker of Chinese. They will understand at least 80 percent, and approaching 100 percent in some cases.

That last example, by the way, is the Sichuan accent of putonghua. Initials, vowels, and finals are all pretty much identical, but their tones are different. Yet misunderstanding is easily avoidable.

Or the music industry, for example. If the tones were equally as important as initials, vowels, and finals, or as important as grammar, there wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar Chinese music industry.

As a non-native, I can understand between 50 and 80 percent of an unfamiliar song (depending on how many classical terms they use). You know the natives understand even more.

Again, that doesn't mean people should ignore tones.

I'm actually not sure what this really implies, actually. There are times where the correct tone really will make the difference between comprehension or not. But you have to be very experienced to be able to recognize a word from context without tones or with the wrong tone.

So maybe I'm just wasting everyone's time.

Still, I think it is important to truly understand the relative importance between pronunciation, grammar, tones, and word choice. Maybe it can't lead to more effective study. Or maybe it can and I'm just not smart enough to develop a way.

[gato]

Finally, go back to the original text and randomize the tones, then read it to a native speaker of Chinese. They will understand at least 80 percent, and approaching 100 percent in some cases.

Do a recording and let's have a listen. 80% sounds much too high.

[anonymoose]

Finally, go back to the original text and randomize the tones, then read it to a native speaker of Chinese. They will understand at least 80 percent, and approaching 100 percent in some cases.

That last example, by the way, is the Sichuan accent of putonghua. Initials, vowels, and finals are all pretty much identical, but their tones are different. Yet misunderstanding is easily avoidable.

 

I don't know much about Sichuanhua, but I can be fairly sure that the tones are not randomised. They may be different from Putonghua, but they still have their own consistency.

 

And by the way, I don't think your comparisons are fair. There is a difference between incorrect tones and badly enunciated tones. I think if you randomised the tones in mandarin such that correctly enunciated erroneous tones were used, comprehension would be very low. The reason that foreigners can get away with bad tones to a certain extent is that regardless of whether the correct tone is used or otherwise, most are badly enunciated and will be recognised as such, rather than being mistaken for other tones. This hampers comprehension, but will not throw the listener completely off.

 

Similarly, foreigners' pronunciation of initials and finals may be non-standard, but that is different to completely randomising the initials and finals.

 

Regardless of all this, though, is that beginners will inevitably be saying simple sentences, which have a very clear context. Thus, the listener can almost guess what is being said. (For example: A: 你是哪个国家的? B: War lai dzer may gwor.) But for anyone who wants to be able to communicate smoothly at an advanced level, pronunciation, including tones, is important.

[OneEye]

That last example, by the way, is the Sichuan accent of putonghua.

 

No it isn't. The tones in 四川話 are systematically different, not randomly different. That makes a big difference. Not to mention 四川話 is by definition not 普通話.

 

I'd argue that tones are more important than initials and finals. A non-native speaker can understand toneless Chinese fairly well, because we're generally more accustomed to hearing it than native speakers due to having to listen to our classmates butcher the language for so long. But my Taiwanese friends can have conversations without actually pronouncing anything but the tones. Mouth full of food? No problem. And they're surprised that I don't understand.

 

The thing that really drove home the importance of tones for me was when I went to order a 鳳梨清茶 but said fēnglì instead, and the lady heard it as 蜂蜜. I couldn't understand why she was hearing it like that, because the initials were completely different. I even said something to the effect of "look at my mouth, I'm not making an 'm' sound," and she still said "對啊，蜂蜜清茶." Only when I finally realized I was saying the tones wrong, and then said the word correctly, did she finally understand what I wanted.

 

Similarly, I went to lunch with a friend lately, and he asked the waitress "你們有基本消費嗎" but said "jībén xiǎofèi," and the lady had no clue what he was saying. Not that there were all that many possibilities in that context, but she was completely lost, and this was near the MTC, so she's presumably used to hearing foreigners speak Chinese. I said it correctly, and she got it immediately.

 

Those are just two anecdotes, of course, but I think the point stands. Tones are just as important as pronunciation and grammar (and everything else), if not more so.

[陳德聰]

I think it's important to note that the comprehensibility of a passage of "incorrect" tones depends very very greatly on how many other "words" could be form using those syllables. If you say the wrong tones and utter gibberish comes out, I'd say it's easier for listeners than if what you said comes out actually sounding like another word.

[mouse]

 

Or the music industry, for example. If the tones were equally as important as initials, vowels, and finals, or as important as grammar, there wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar Chinese music industry.

 

A surprising thing for a musician to say. Music isn't about comprehending language. If it were, Jay Chou would never had such a massively successful career.

[Guest realmayo]

It's such an abstract discussion really, and probably most helpful for Vietnamese or Thai learners of Chinese: they can chose which feature to concentrate on, the rest of us will find tones particularly hard, but in the same way that 'I must learn 3000 characters before starting to read' would be sub-ideal in terms of motivation for most beginners, 'I must have perfect tones before I start speaking sentences' could have a similar negative effect, even if it's probably an achievable ideal as part of an innovative beginners course.

 

In a way it's no surprise people can hear tones before anything else: I reckon I could detect if a Spanish speaker was being angry/quizzical/bored by their tone(s), despite not knowing the words they're saying.

[renzhe]

First, change all the initials around. Read it aloud to a native Chinese speaker. How much will they comprehend? I'd say zero percent, but certainly not more than 10 percent.

Now take the original text and swap all the vowel sounds. Agan, read it aloud to a native Chinese speaker. How much will they comprehend? I'd say still zero percent, but certainly not more than 10 percent.

I can't help but find this test strange. If you change all initials around and swap vowels, you will get something that is not even remotely Chinese. You might as well record it and play it backwards.

In my experience, as long as your initials and finals are not too far off, they don't even matter much. Read a text in which you change every initial and every final by something "close enough" (not some random stuff that's not even possible in Chinese), and as long as your tones are right and there are no ultra-obscure words in it, it will be understood at close to 100%.

On the other hand, pronounce initials and finals perfectly, but mangle half of the tones, and you'll get blank stares.

Simple toneless speech is understood the same way Tarzan English is understood. With a lot of guesswork and effort on the part of the listener. If you really never plan to get good and only want the most basic, occasional communication, it will do, but IMHO, it's not a sound learning strategy.

On the other hand, I do agree that you shouldn't let fear of tones and characters and other things paralyse you. It's OK to make mistakes while you're learning, as long as you keep a general watch over them and try to correct them. It's a process which takes years, but which should be done properly from the beginning, IMHO.

[Shelley]

Couldn't agree more with renzhe. Especially:   "It's a process which takes years, but which should be done properly from the beginning,"

 

Do it right from the start, it is harder to unlearn incorrect things than it is to learn it correctly in the first place.

 

Learn characters, pinyin, and tones all together. Do not neglect bits that seem hard, persevere and it will all come together.

[Nathan Mao]

 

On the other hand, pronounce initials and finals perfectly, but mangle half of the tones, and you'll get blank stares.

No, you won't.

Watch 一代枭雄. In it there is a 傻老外 that has significant speaking lines.  Almost all of his tones are wrong, but he very understandable, even to a non-native like me.

Again, the Sichuan accent is putonghua with different tones.  As an intermediate learner my first time in China, I had a much harder time understanding someone from Hunan than someone from Sichuan.  Hunan speakers only f/h and n/l, and it made their speech incomprehensible until I caught on, and even then slowed down my comprehension significantly.  But the Sichuan speakers were always comprehensible, they just sounded funny.

 

The more I think about this, the more I'm certain I'm on to something.  What, exactly, I'm on to, I'm not sure.

 

Here are a few points the must be addressed in this topic:

 

1) Go to a Windows computer with the Chinese keyboard installed.  Turn it to Chinese. Start typing what you want to say.  Be sure to accept word by word instead of character by character.  You will not enter any tones.  It will be approximately 80%　accurate.

今天我去看电影。 那个电影特好看。回家的路，那位迪车的司机开得太快。 我告诉他，千万别伤了高速公路，但是它非得要上。有堵车，我们晚一个小时才回到家里。

There you go.  Typed without a single tone, but the computer was able to identify exactly what I meant.  These were the top suggestions.  It got everything from context.  1 mistake is 他/它 but that has nothing to do with tones.  The only other mistake is 伤/上。

 

If a computer can follow rules of context to correctly pick the correct words, then so can a human mind.

 

2) Tones are not rigid, objective pitches.  They change in relation to each other.  Two high tones in succession are often pitched with the first one slighly lower, like in 今天. That can make 今 actually sound like a rising tone, if said quickly.  So what ends up being slightly more important than the actual tones themselves is the relationship between the tones.

 

3) Watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFA32NZ83iY

Without using a dictionary, how many actual, correct tones can you pick out of his talking?  30%? 50%?

 

4) I'm not denying that tones do play a vital role. If they were completely unimportant, Chinese wouldn't have them.  I've said all along that you can get 80% to 90% (and 100% if you lucky with unambiguous word choice) of meaning without tones.  But 80% communication isn't enough.  Tones make up the difference.

 

5) Tones are also extremely important in isolation, i.e., when you don't have a sentence of context around them.  Walk up to your big sister and say, "jie".  If you get the tone wrong, you might be asking her to tear open the bag of chips for her.  Or give a one-word answer to a question, and if you use the wrong tones, you destroy comprehension. 

 

6) Take a Chinese person very agitatedly demanding that someone speak: "你说呢!"  The 说 will have a perfectly accurate, crystal-clear tone.  The 你 might not, because the only really important part of the sentence is 说.  That's a very stark, exaggerated example of what I've seen over the years: The emphasized/stressed words are where you actually get the best examples of tones.  The unemphasized words have de-emphasized tones, almost to the point where they can't be detected. 

But of course, that means to imitate the flow of stress emphasis you must already know what the tone is of the word/character you want to emphasize.

 

7) When I talk about "flow", I'm talking about stress emphasis.  In English, we emphasize or clarify meaning with pitch.  In English, you designate a question by having your pitch rise at the end of your sentence.  When you are angry, you say the important words with a short/sharp falling pitch.  Or a slow descending pitch to indicate derision or sometimes sarcasm.  It is programmed into us as our native language.  But to speak Chinese well, you have to unlearn that.  You have to learn to express your natural (and sometimes strong) emotions with Chinese methods of stress.  That can be lengthening the target word/character (which has the result of emphasizing the tone), or it can be by putting spaces in between words.  But you have to unlearn pitch alteration emphasis to speak Chinese well.

And the reason why is because if you don't, it will mess up your tones.  Chinese people will understand what you mean, but you may get funny looks, and anyone who knows you well may laugh at you for mangling the tones that way.

But they will still understand.

[Nathan Mao]

@Shelley

 

Do not neglect bits that seem hard, persevere and it will all come together.

Who said neglect? My own words:

 

getting tones wrong isn't as much an obstacle to communication as some people seem to think. So be clear on your goal: is it to understand basic Chinese communication?  Is it to communicate effectively in Chinese?  Then don't sweat tones that much.  Is it to sound exactly like a native? Or is it to be able to be able to know what someone is saying, even if you lack context?　Is it to be able to prevent as many misunderstandings as possible?  Then never stop memorizing, reviewing, and improving your knowledge of tones.

 

Moreover, nothing I said was related to "difficult" in any way.  "Effective" learning is what I'm trying to dig down to.

 

Realmayo does a good job summing up what I'm trying to demonstrate/argue.

 

@mouse

Not surprising at all, actually.

As a musician, I know that music is multi-mode communication.  I know that you can fudge some aspects of communication for artistic purposes.  Meaning, you often break/ignore rules in a way that paradoxically increases comprehension of the topic to be communicated.  In music, that topic is often, but not always, emotion.

So there is enough communication in Chinese, even in a mode that nearly abandons tones, that people can understand what you are trying to say.

A point that may be interesting only to me: I can't think of an example right now, but there are songs that melody pitch matches conversational Chinese stress emphasis.  The most important word in a sentence will have the highest pitch, the unstressed parts of the sentence will be de-emphasized as lower in pitch and softer.   It is really grating when a Chinese song contradicts natural conversational stress emphasis.  Again, can't think of an example off-hand.

[Nathan Mao]

@anonymoose

 

I don't know much about Sichuanhua, but I can be fairly sure that the tones are not randomised. They may be different from Putonghua, but they still have their own consistency.

My apologies for being unclear.  I was typing on my iPad. I originally wanted to write "swap the tones around so that they are different from normal, but apply them consistently", but "randomize" was easier to type, and I figured that was clear enough. 

 

Does it change the impact at all?  The tones are still wrong, but the comprehension is still greater than if you do the other modifications in an equally consistent manner.

[Nathan Mao]

@gato

Here's three:

 

1) Even an upper-level intermediate non-native speaker should be able to get 100% of this one.   It doesn't use any advanced vocabulary, except maybe 仙人掌:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_X_s9XHpYA

 

2) This one is a little bit more difficult, there are a few more advanced vocabulary examples, and some ambiguous words that aren't fully clear from context.  A native speaker might still get 100% of the characters/words, but I could expect even an advanced non-native Chinese student might need several listenings to get everything. Still, the overall point of the song should be clear to any advanced Chinese student, so overall comprehension would be equivalent to 100%, even if a few words were missed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiwIzCQ0Y-w

 

3) This one might be the hardest, because the sultriness of the singer's voice also makes some words less clear.  Still, most of the song is pretty clear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hddHrD13Slo

 

Now, maybe music and song lyrics aren't the best example, because they probably choose words to avoid ambiguity.  But that indicates that you can choose your words to avoid ambiguity, too, right?

[OneEye]

I'll reiterate: Your own ability to understand non-standard speech has no bearing on that of a native speaker. What you find difficult or easy is not the same thing that a native speaker does. Their brains process the language differently than yours. I don't really care what aspects of the language you can de-emphasize and still be understood by an 阿兜仔, I want to know which aspects are most important for being understood by native speakers.

 

I think foreigners have a much easier time understanding speech with bad/nonexistent tones than native speakers do. I can't provide any citations for that, but that's what I've experienced. In fact, in my interpretation class earlier this semester, our teacher got one of the native Chinese speakers to read a few sentences using tones that had been swapped around systematically (3 instead of 1, that sort of thing). The non-native speakers in the class understood perfectly, and the native speakers had no clue what had just been said.

 

I'll grant you this. Tones may be more important in Taiwanese Mandarin than in Putonghua, because the former is more syllable-timed and has very, very few neutral tones, while the latter is more stress-timed and has quite a few neutral tones. So maybe what you're saying holds a little more water when talking about 普通話, but I still don't buy it. Tones must be good in order to communicate at an advanced level. I imagine yours are, but you've now forgotten what kind of work you had to put in to be able to not think about them as much anymore.

[Nathan Mao]

My bottom line:

1) Tones aren't as important as grammar and pronunciation.

2) Beginners should study tones. 　There are times when the correct tone is indispensable.  Tones have survived for a reason: In certain circumstances, they reduce unavoidable ambiguity and increase comprehension.

 

3) That being said, even beginners shouldn't over-emphasize tones, or build them up as an obstacle to be feared.  Tones will improve with repetition, use, and familiarity, just like grammar, pronunciation, and word choice will. Don't let  fear of inaccurate tones prevent you from seizing an opportunity to speak.

 

4) Equally as important, but (in my experience/observation) much less present in Chinese study, is how to add emotional/contextual stress emphasis.  The way it is done in western (non-tonal?) languages is by pitch, which does NOT work in Chinese.

 

If the topic bores you, my apologies.

If you believe this was hammered out long ago and should not have even been a topic, my apologies.

Personally, I think there is value in discussing this topic for better understanding. I, at least, have a more clear view of tones than when I started.

 

5) So listen to how native Chinese speakers actually speak.  Imitate the best you can.  Be aware that tones are not necessarily consistently/clearly utilized.

[renzhe]

Almost all of his tones are wrong, but he very understandable, even to a non-native like me.

Yes, to you.

On the other hand, a native speaker will probably understand heavily accented mandarin much better, as long as the tones are right.

Again, the Sichuan accent is putonghua with different tones. As an intermediate learner my first time in China, I had a much harder time understanding someone from Hunan than someone from Sichuan. Hunan speakers only f/h and n/l, and it made their speech incomprehensible until I caught on, and even then slowed down my comprehension significantly.

Incomprehensible to you. Yet the two are not much more incomprehensible than each other to a native speaker.

It's just that you are lacking (or lacked at that time) a skill necessary for understanding spoken Mandarin -- tone comprehension.

It's not that tones are the only thing that matter, it's just that they matter just as much as everything else. IMHO, they are not less important. It's just that we (non-tonal folks) find them extremely hard, so they are the first thing to get neglected, and we compensate this handicap by working harder on other skills.

3) That being said, even beginners shouldn't over-emphasize tones, or build them up as an obstacle to be feared. Tones will improve with repetition, use, and familiarity, just like grammar, pronunciation, and word choice will. Don't let fear of inaccurate tones prevent you from seizing an opportunity to speak.

I would say that drilling the pinyin chart and tones should be the very first thing any learner does. Tones in isolation are easy enough, and everybody gets the hang of them fast.

I do agree, however, that tones in sentences take time, and that you will make mistakes for quite a while, and that there's nothing to do about it, and that you shouldn't fret over it too much in the beginning. If you keep an eye out for them, they will naturally improve, and there are exercises you can do at a later stage to improve them.

I would just insist that you shouldn't do things which will hamper your progress later. I acknowledge that you have a rather complex view on this, but too many people only see the "tones don't matter for comprehension" part and convince themselves of it, and totally give up on tones, and they never ever speak good Chinese as a result.

Good Chinese means good tones, and good tones come from lots of practice.

[Nathan Mao]

@oneeye

 

Their brains process the language differently than yours.

This is true. Acquired languages process in a different part of the brain than native languages.  I don't agree with your conclusions, however.

I hate speaking with another non-native speaker.  I feel like if I speak/comprehend at an 80% accuracy, and they speak/comprehend at an 80% accuracy, then we end up communicating with 64% effectiveness.  A native speaker can understand what I was trying to say if I mangle the tones, whereas a fellow learner doesn't have the vocabulary size to instantaneously sift through the possibilities and figure out what I actually meant like a native can.

 

 

That's why I keep going back to repetition being the key, and why I think song lyrics are so useful for learning.  The advantages of repetition that doesn't feel like work is so great that it outstrips the relatively minor disadvantages of no tones and occasional grammar-betraying poetic speech.  The repetition improves your ability to hear in words, it increases your understanding of what can be said, based on the location in the sentence and context of the topic, including its location in a series of sentences.

 

If someone insists that tones are equally as important as grammar, word choice, and pronunciation, then Chinese pop music would be incoherent and useless for learning.  But it is actually comprehensible, and very valuable for learning Chinese, if used correctly.

 

 

Tones may be more important in Taiwanese Mandarin than in Putonghua, because the former is more syllable-timed and has very, very few neutral tones, while the latter is more stress-timed and has quite a few neutral tones.

I don't understand what you mean by syllable-timed versus stress-timed.

 

You may well be 100% correct that tones are more important in Taiwan.  I haven't consistently interacted with Taiwan Mandarin speakers since 2001, and I haven't had any Taiwan Mandarin encounters since 2008.

 

One other aspect is that in Taiwan Mandarin, they have increased ambiguity by nearly eliminating the retroflex.  Blurring the difference between sh/s, ch/c, zh/z and r/e (这些日子 comes out something like "zei sie ezi" in Taiwan Mandarin, to this Beijinghua soaked ear) vastly increases the ambiguity by exponentially expanding the possibilities of what word you just heard, which I can understand would then increase the need for accurate, clear, and perhaps even emphasized tones to increase clarity.

[Guest realmayo]

My bottom line:

1) Tones aren't as important as grammar and pronunciation.

Tones are part of pronunciation.

You might as well say the l/n distinction isn't something a beginner should worry about too much, or the u/v vowels, or perhaps zh/z/j.

Or tell someone studying English not to worry about long/short vowels because when you tell your friend you need to wash your shits they won't misunderstand.

Edit: and you'd be right to tell them that, if they were studying the normal way and lacked confidence to start talking. But I think you'd be wrong to tell them that they needn't try to get them right, needn't put in some effort to try to improve them.

[Nathan Mao]

哎呀！都怪我没有早一点意识到我才是班门弄斧。

对不起大家浪费你的时间谈这个无聊的玩艺。