Don't insist too much on the tones, focus on the rythm

[Juliette (法珠雷)]

So this is the advice one of my Chinese teacher in University gave us.

It was the first time someone told me not to fret too much about the tones, and I think she definitely has a point. When hearing Chinese people talking, I always felt it was about a certain musicality of the sentence than the tones, even though they definitely are there.

What do you guys think ?

[anonymoose]

No. Rhythm is important, but why dispense with one for the sake of the other? If you want good Chinese, you need good tones too.

[Guest realmayo]

Do you it's reasonable to say, tones with no rhythm are bad tones?

 

I mean, it pays to practise tones in isolation and there are plenty of times a tone needs to be produced text-book style. But it makes sense that the focus on tones can hinder speaking normally. A little bit like, perhaps, pronouncing the "t" in: "I don't know". There are times you need to be able to say "don't" with the "t", but you also need to be able to say it without it too.

[Juliette (法珠雷)]

^ yeah, I think it was her point. As in, in a sentence, you'll put the emphasis on certain key words (therefore certain tones) and be much more subtle about others, almost ( but not quite) giving them a neutral pronunciation.

[li3wei1]

I'd say the key word here is 'fret'. Many beginners get worked up about the tones, some to the point where it puts them off studying the language, or opening their mouths to say something. My advice would be to listen to, and repeat, everything you hear: tones, rhythms, sounds. Do your best, know that you'll make mistakes, but don't get so worked up about any one of them that you feel you can't say anything right. Everything will improve with practice.

[renzhe]

Absolutely agree with liwei.

It's good advice in the sense that you shouldn't let tones paralyse you. It's a skill that takes time and occasional mistakes in the beginning are inevitable and should not hamper progress in other areas of the language.

That said, tones are something that you will need to pay attention to for many years and their importance can't be overstated. Not worrying about tones is like not worrying about declensions, articles or vowel height in other languages -- people will understand you just fine, but you will forever sound like Tarzan and often be treated accordingly.

[Lu]

We had a thread the other day about the worst advice you can give someone in learning Chinese, and 'don't worry about the tones' was one of the winners. Tones are not the only thing in Chinese, you can make yourself understood without good tones, and rhythm is part of speaking a language well, but telling someone who starts learning Chinese and has probably never encountered tones in their life to not worry about tones too much is a bad idea. You need to learn them so well they become automatic, and then you can stop worrying about them.

That said, renzhe is right of course, you shouldn't let tones paralyse you. But you should keep them in mind as something important and always do your best to get them right.

[Yadang]

I agree with liwei, renzhe and Lu. Especially when Lu says 

 

 

You need to learn them so well they become automatic, and then you can stop worrying about them.

 

I think it's a lot better to worry about them too much in the beginning then not worry about them enough. As Renzhe said, don't let them paralyze you, but it's a lot easier to go from really exaggerated textbook tones to more naturally flowing tones than no tones to natural flowing tones - or at least it that's the impression I get from hearing foreigners speak who didn't worry as much about tones in the beginning as I did...

[Demonic_Duck]

@renzhe: I disagree with the "people will understand you just fine" thing (for anything on that list - tones, declensions, articles, other aspects of pronunciation). People will understand you just fine, until they don't. If every single other aspect of your language skills are perfect, it probably won't cause too many problems. If you never say anything more complicated than "kung pao chicken, please", it won't cause too many problems either. But realistically, at some point it's gonna cause confusion, and that might be a point at which it's critical to make yourself understood.

 

I agree with Lu. What I suspect the OP's teacher was trying to get at was that you should treat the sentence as a single unit, repeating it as closely as possible to how you actually hear it, and stressing the words you hear stressed. With that said, even if that was what she was trying to say, I don't really agree - I think you are doing yourself a huge favour if you make sure your knowledge of tones is solid to start with, and that means "mā má mǎ mà" drills and all the rest.

[Yadang]

 

I disagree with the "people will understand you just fine" thing

 

Yeah, I was thinking about that too... Many of my foreign friends have to repeat many things more than I do, and I think most of the time it's a problem with tones. Also, I don't think understanding is a good high enough goal. I can see someone arguing that it depends how much time or to what level someone will learn the language - I think there's a point to this, but unless your goals are to only have an extremely low command of the language, it would be well worth it to put in the time to have at least decent pronunciation. The reason I don't think understanding should be the benchmark, is because it is often that I can understand a foreigner speaking, but it's not comfortable for me to listen. It really takes much more brain power and much more thinking and discerning on my part to understand. But when a speaker has better pronunciation, it makes the conversation so much easier, much more enjoyable, and I'm much more likely to want to continue talking to them.

 

I think if you're going to the trouble to get anywhere past basics in Chinese, you should spend the time to make sure that all of what you learned, when said, doesn't require the listener to strain their ears and brain whenever you talk.

 

 

What I suspect the OP's teacher was trying to get at was that you should treat the sentence as a single unit

 

This is what I was thinking too... I think it's good advice, but only after you master individual tones. I don't think you should go straight to this, but rather start small (individual tones), then perhaps tone pair drills, and then sentences.

[renzhe]

I guess it would be more correct to say "people will understand you just fine much of the time, but you are making it much more difficult for them". I certainly don't wish to encourage sloppy language learning!

People messing up tones and cases can be understood, and often are, because languages are very redundant. But it's a very inefficient way to communicate.

[Guest realmayo]

I still think it's worth addressing the point the OP seems to make: that too much focus on the tones is a mistake when you speak.

 

That doesn't mean you shouldn't focus on them as part of your language learning.

 

But that too much emphasis on them when you're speaking to people in real life means you're speaking bad Chinese.

[tysond]

Agree with the good advice already given.

 

I'll make the observation that I've yet to meet a foreigner past the beginner stage who over-exaggerates correct tones to the point of making it hard to understand.  It happens early on but usually they either pick up a more natural usage... or....

 

I know plenty who are quite good at understanding and know a thousand words, but speak with monotone neutral, monotone first tone, outright incorrect tones or just a random sing-song, which tend to cause problems, and even I find it hard to listen to.  Frankly I think this is what you want to avoid while you aim at a more natural intonation.

[Demonic_Duck]

@realmayo: That depends what you mean by "too much emphasis on them". If you mean emphasis on getting the tones to fit with your simplistic conceptions of them, without regard for intonation or the flow of the sentence, then I agree. But if you mean emphasis on getting the tones exactly correct by copying how they're actually used, I don't see that how could cause you to speak "bad Chinese", unless you were concentrating on that aspect alone to the detriment of all other language skills.

 

Edit: also agree with tysond. These people are probably at the greatest danger of being misunderstood - they know enough language to make reasonably complex utterences, but those utterences are unintelligable due to mispronunciation. I tend to find I'm better at understanding them than native speakers are, though it probably hurts my ears more.

[Guest realmayo]

I don't see that how could cause you to speak "bad Chinese"

 

Well, it would be bad English if you insisted on pronouncing the final consonant of every word you produced in natural conversation.

 

Bad Chinese would be insisting on pronouncing every tone to its full range in natural conversation.

 

I don't think it's a comprehension issue -- it just sounds odd.

[Mckk]

Keeping tones in mind and realising their importance is NOT the same thing as saying "don't worry too much about tones." The OP's teacher is right. The point is, if you worry about tones constantly, you just won't end up speaking. And if you never speak, you'll never learn. The advice of "don't worry about tones" isn't to say "forget about them", nor is it to say they're unimportant - but simply that actually breaking through and at least trying to speak is of greater importance, and the tones shouldn't paralyse you.

 

The point is, tones are like music. My husband pronounces Cantonese really, really well. 90% of the time I understand him without almost any trouble. Why? The way he does it - while he does pay attention to the tones, there's another trick. He identifies clearly the tone of the very first word in the sentence he's trying to say. Then thereafter, he says everything relative to that one tone. It's works surprisingly well. He sees it like he's singing.

 

Another key - you gotta laugh. My brother-in-law gave up learning Canto cus he felt we were laughing at him and at his attempts. But c'mon, if you say "I ate an elephant" instead of something like, "How do you do?" - yes, it is frigging funny, and that's okay! Laugh a little. Sometimes my husband will say, "Oh that's like, SO different. How can I actually not hear that?" (he's being sarcastic here) and we'll both start laughing. Yes, sometimes the tones are really similar - it's ok. Laugh

[msittig]

One way to work on rhythm and tones at the same time is to practice using Sinosplice's tone-pair drills. It gets you away from focusing on individual tones, and toward how they sound in context.

 

http://www.sinosplice.com/learn-chinese/tone-pair-drills

[hedwards]

There's some good reasons for not focusing too much on producing correct tones when speaking. Part of it is that focusing on that engages the prefrontal cortext with disengages the basal ganglia, which makes it harder to mimic the intended language which in turn means worse tones in the long run.

 

I always wondered why I had comparatively little trouble with accents when learning languages and the reason is that I've got ADD and my PFC tends not to be strong enough to prevent my brain from picking up accents.

 

As far as the topic goes, I spend time working on my tones, but not because I want to produce them, but because I want to hear them more accurately. The production of the tones will generally follow the preception of the tones. When I hear a new word, I want to hear it correctly so that I'll pick up on the tone automatically. I also don't want to waste resources focusing on tone rather than on producing fluent conversation that has the correct intonation and stress patterns.

 

There's also the issue of bad stress patterns making language difficult or impossible to comprehend.

[Demonic_Duck]

Well, it would be bad English if you insisted on pronouncing the final consonant of every word you produced in natural conversation.

 

Bad Chinese would be insisting on pronouncing every tone to its full range in natural conversation.

Did you read the first half of the sentence of which you quoted the second half?

[etm001]

 

 

One way to work on rhythm and tones at the same time is to practice using Sinosplice's tone-pair drills. It gets you away from focusing on individual tones, and toward how they sound in context.

You can also check out the Glossika website - they sell a downloadable PDF/MP3 tone drill package, similar to what you see on Sinosplice. I can't find the direct link at the moment (I know that they offer it because I purchased it for about ~$5USD). I use it periodically as a "tune up" for my tones.