More Advice for Learning Chinese: Possibly Controversial

[renzhe]

No need to get offended. You have the right to write your opinions, and you did so without insults or personal attacks, and you did address other people's points. So that's fine and no hard feelings.

It's just that some of us disagree. My experience with mangled tones and native speakers is that it can be a serious impediment to understanding, especially in longer conversations and especially with non-trivial subject matter.

[Nathan Mao]

@realmayo, renzhe, OneEye, et al,

Yet, the existence of Chinese song lyrics doesn't fit with most of the arguments being made. Native speakers and advanced non-native speakers can understand the topic and 60% to 100% of the lyrics on first listening, without a lyric sheet.

 

Without tones.

 

How do you explain it?

[renzhe]

Y cn ndrstnd ths lthgh ll vwls r mssng.

Or how about this one: try singing a technical work, or a novel about philosophy and see how far you get

[Nathan Mao]

Did anyone try the songs to see how much they understood?

[Nathan Mao]

 

Or how about this one: try singing a technical work, or a novel about philosophy and see how far you get

Specialized jargon is specialized jargon.

If you don't know the terms already, tones won't help you figure them out.

 

Again, how do you explain that people can understand upwards of 80% of a song's lyrics when there are no tones?

[Nathan Mao]

 

No need to get offended. You have the right to write your opinions, and you did so without insults or personal attacks, and you did address other people's points. So that's fine and no hard feelings.

Not offended. I was attempting to express wry self-deprecation.

[renzhe]

Again, how do you explain that people can understand upwards of 80% of a song's lyrics when there are no tones?

All languages are redundant to a certain extent and we can get away with ignoring some aspects of language up to a point. You can ignore large parts of grammar, or have very poor pronunciation (many non-native speakers of any language pronounce many things incorrectly), and people will still understand you.

You can completely ignore tenses and moods, and people will understand you. You can drop prepositions too, and adjectives, and people will still understand you.

"I go work go walk yesterday. Tomorrow I go car go work".

Oryoucouldwritelikethisandpeoplewillstillunderstandwhatyouarewritingtheyjustwontappreciateitverymuch"

You understood that, but nobody recommends learning a language like that. Toneless Chinese is bad, butchered Chinese. It makes listening more difficult.

[mouse]

 

Again, how do you explain that people can understand upwards of 80% of a song's lyrics when there are no tones?

 

For similar reasons that us English speakers can understand song lyrics even when the grammar can be totally mangled to fit the meter. Or the way stress changes, or all those elongated vowels and extra syllables. All those things would be strange and even incomprehensible in the spoken language, but we've learned — after thousands of hours of repeated listenings from a very young age — to understand it. I get why you're highlighting the lack of tones in Chinese pop music, it is interesting, but it's important to note that singing and speaking aren't the same.

[Nathan Mao]

If anything, I'm feeling frustration that I'm the only one that thinks there is worth in digging deeply into the details.

 

Sure:

Newbies, study tones! 

 

I agree.

 

完了！

 

But there is more to it than that.  At what point can you stop focusing on tones? 

How do you know? 

If you had to assign how much each element of a Chinese word contributes to comprehension, isn't it worthwhile to recognize that tones might contribute less than pronunciation and grammar? (10/45/45 or 20/40/40 should lead to different conclusions about studying than 30/30/30, shouldn't it?)

Isn't it interesting that several methods of inputting Chinese on computers don't have tones at all?

Am I the only one that can fully visualize the correct characters 90% of the time on basic news topics if pinyin is presented without tones, but grouped correctly into words?

Is it interesting that I can?

Can other people?

Since Chinese songs don't have tones, should they be excluded from Chinese study?

If not, is it necessary to complement music lyric practice with extra tones?

If it isn't necessary, is it still a good idea?

Why or why not?

 

These are interesting questions to me.

 

I fancy what I'm doing is trying to take apart the Chinese language like a mechanic disassembles a complex engine, trying to understand how every part contributes to the engine's function.

 

But maybe I'm just fooling myself.

[Nathan Mao]

 

Oryoucouldwritelikethisandpeoplewillstillunderstandwhatyouarewritingtheyjustwontappreciateitverymuch"

To me, this is a great example of classical Chinese.

[Nathan Mao]

At least I warned everyone in the title of the post that my views might be controversial...

[Guest realmayo]

Am I the only one that can fully visualize the correct characters 90% of the time on basic news topics if pinyin is presented without tones, but grouped correctly into words?

Just a thought, but while you're reading you're probably assessing what the words are meant to be and automatically giving them a tone via how they sound in your head. Listening is different: if someone says the wrong tones it's more effort to 'unhear' the word you first thought they said and substitute another.

[alanmd]

I agree with a couple of @renzhe's last comments about manged tones and native speakers, and redundancy in language.

 

To leave out the tones you have to be quite an advanced speaker. Leave out the wrong one and people will just stare at you, without being able to comprehend. Same goes for any part of speech, especially if you make a change or a mistake that a native speaker would never make.

 

 

I asked one very educated native Chinese speaker if she could read the toneless pinyin, and she said she said that both the toneless with correct word spacing and the numbered tones with spaces were very hard going, the tone marked correctly spaced pinyin was easy to understand. Y cld prbbly ndrstnd nglsh wth n vwls bt t wldn't b mch fn! Try missing the vowel on a single word, with no context around it, and it'll be a much different story.

[li3wei1]

I'm feeling frustration that I'm the only one that thinks there is worth in digging deeply into the details

 

I'm interested, and I think you are raising interesting points and providing some evidence. It would indeed be interesting to do some controlled experiments of the kind you've been discussing, but you'd have to be careful to distinguish between tone marks/numbers, native speakers vs learners, listening vs reading, etc.. I've been lurking because I don't have anything to contribute. 

[Nathan Mao]

The responses to this other topic are fascinating in light of discussions in this one.

[mouse]

 

Since Chinese songs don't have tones, should they be excluded from Chinese study?

If not, is it necessary to complement music lyric practice with extra tones?

If it isn't necessary, is it still a good idea?

Why or why not?

 

I don't want to give the impression that these aren't interesting questions, or that I'm not interested in discussing this. I'm sure it must feel like everyone's piling on, but I think it's not just because you're asking these kind of questions, it's probably got more to do with you make big statements like "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." Which is frankly untenable. Internet pedants like me can't resist refuting these kind of blanket statements. It's a curse, really.

[Nathan Mao]

@li3wei1

 

Over the last few months (before I even found this website and started arguments about tones), I was growing more interested in getting a PhD in linguistics.

Now I'm nigh-unto convinced I should do it.  I don't need it for work needs, but I just want to develop that new knowledge and share it with others...advance global understanding of linguistics just that tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a percentage.

 

I really do want to test out some of these things.  I just don't want to ruin anyone's Chinese learning aspirations by doing it.

[Nathan Mao]

@mouse

Speaking as an internet pedant myself, that makes perfect sense.  Shall I see if I can rephrase that argument, or is it a moot point now?

[mouse]

 

Shall I see if I can rephrase that argument, or is it a moot point now?

 

No go for it. I'll probably end up agreeing with you in the end, I'm a total pushover.

[Nathan Mao]

@alanmd

The first time I met the Beijing lady who is now my wife, I know my tones weren't very good. But we had perfect communication...it was because her Chinese was native-speaker...she could figure out what I was saying despite mangled tones, and it didn't hurt communication at all.

A year or two later (11-12 years ago, now), I called her long distance and a co-worker answered the phone.  She said, "What? Who is this? Don't bother me!" and hung up.  I called back and patiently explained who I was, and she was apologetic.  I asked her why she didn't recognize the American accent, and she said I sounded like a 外地人。
 

Now when I talk to someone on the phone, they think I'm a normal putonghua speaker, if not a 北京人。 But I can't tell you what tones are for 60-70% of what I say.

 

Later, when we started corresponding long distance, computers didn't have Chinese capability built in. Or maybe it was just that it the email program couldn't handle them...can't remember.

Anyway, it was WAY too much of a chore to get the tone marks right on everything.  I started grouping my tone-mark-less pinyin, and she fully understood me.

 

Back then, I admit I couldn't understand Chinese songs w/o the lyric sheet.  I could get maybe 10% of it correct.

But now when I listen to unfamiliar songs, or old songs that I never once looked at lyrics for, I can understand 60% to 90%. Sometimes I do think I understand something, and it makes sense in context, and then I look at the lyrics and realize I misunderstood. That happens maybe 10% of the time.

 

Those are things I'm trying to square with the relative importance of tones.