Chinese people DON'T learn tones. That just means YOU MUST

[AlexBlackman]

Some people say tones are unimportant because Chinese people aren't taught tones.

They are right; Chinese people aren't taught tones, they are totally immersed in correctly spoken Chinese at the young age they learn best.

Tones, as a linguistic concept don't exist to them, tones are subsumed into a matter of right and wrong pronouncation.

 

Using incorrect tones is as alien and ridiculous to them as starting with the wrong constonant or vowel is in English.

 

You are too old to get this right through assimulation; You must make full use of your adult mind to master Chinese through other methods but never forget to LEARN YOUR TONES.

 

sorry for the preachy tone.... (^_^)

[liuzhou]

Interesting.

 

They may not "learn" tones", but they certainly "acquire" them.

 

I disagree that "Tones, as a linguistic concept don't exist to them“. Every Chinese friend I have can answer me immediately if I ask "Which tone is XXX?"

 

Also, native "Chinese" speakers often make tone errors. Just as native English speakers sometime use da "wrong" consonants and vowels, ain't you 'eard?

 

Round here most people pronounce 鸡 with a hard /g/, for example.

[AlexBlackman]

Good choice of words, I should have said "acquire".

 

What I've found is that they can find a characters tone if they sound it out.  Few non CSL teaching Chinese consciously know that "寺庙“ has two fourth tones but they certainly say it with two fourth tones and would know if you said it incorrectly, 

[liuzhou]

You might find this interesting.

[stapler]

@ liuzhou - interesting, I know a good many people who can't tell me what tone a syllable is

[AlexBlackman]

 

You might find this interesting.

 

And a disproportionate number of native Mandarin speakers have absolute pitch too.

[Shelley]

You are too old to get this right through assimilation

 

I think that is not entirely true.

 

IMHO that is the way to learn tones. As part of the character, you learn the pronunciation with the tone. They are one and the same and are inseparable.

 

The hardest thing to learn IMO is tone sandhi but again if it is a common pairing then I try to learn it as is, with the tone sandhi as its pronunciation.

 

I find this hard to explain and I hope I have made it clear.

[Xiao Kui]

Using correct tones will make your Chinese sound much better, but it usually isn't necessary to make yourself understood. I didn't start drilling tones until 3+ years into my Chinese journey.  Knowing the tones makes speaking and reading smoother so I definitely recommend it, but if you have limited time to learn as much as you can (1-2 years, for example), I think your time could be spent better on speaking and listening practice.  Sure, learn tones and be familiar with the concept, but don't obsess over them or bore yourself drilling - you can always add them later. 

If you live in Sichuan or Yunnan, I think they switch some of the tones (I used to know which ones!) so you might get confused anyway

[Xiao Kui]

And a disproportionate number of native Mandarin speakers have absolute pitch too.

 

I think this could certainly be language related, but I think it also has to do with music education.  I think Solfege is taught to young children, which really helps with ear-training.  I took band for 6 years in school and never learned this. I didn't even have the opportunity to take ear-training till university (which I didn't).  When I was recording with some Chinese musicians they used it all the time, including one person with us who had not been trained as a professional musician. Maybe someone who knows more about music education in China could tell us more...

[OneEye]

Using correct tones will make your Chinese sound much better, but it usually isn't necessary to make yourself understood.

 

Sorry, but that's terrible advice. It might be true at a very early level when there are only a limited number of things you could possibly be saying (thus allowing context to make up for your bad pronunciation), but as you become more advanced and your vocabulary increases, bad tones will get in the way much more.

 

Fixing bad tones once you're already at an advanced level is a very painful process, because you've established bad habits. I've seen quite a few people go through it. Get it right from the beginning and you'll save yourself a lot of pain and suffering. Aim for the target from the start and you'll have to correct your course much less.

[AlexBlackman]

@ One Eye

 

I agree.  I've failed and failed to fix my fossilised mistakes.   I've actually reached the point of considering taking drugs to give me a chance to fix them.

[Xiao Kui]

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to mislead anyone, but I was conversational long before I got my tones right, and I couldn't really even hear them correctly at the beginning anyway - I could only approximate them.  I never was misunderstood because of a mispronounced tone. I placed into an intermediate class my first semester studying so I didn't get the tones drilled in since that was done in a beginner's class.  I learned them later because I wanted my reading and  speech to sound more fluent and natural, and learning them seemed to come more naturally when I was further along into the language.  I got a tutor to help me specifically with the tones and after 3-4 lessons I learned them. Listening to an audiobook helped me to incorporate them more naturally into my speech. In Sichuan native speakers switch their tones when speaking Mandarin and they can communicate fluently with other speakers. (Anyone who has  ridden a taxi in Chengdu knows that if you pronounce the destination with standard Mandarin tones the driver will repeat it with other tones. you will think they are correcting you, but no, they are just switching the tones.) 

[haojun]

Well, there are so many discussions about tones in chinese out there. And most people think is only related to chinese language. I am no linguist, but chinese is the fourth language including my native language i am learning. Many western people learning another language than their native language, will face the same challenge with "tones" when learning a language other than chinese. They just call it pronounciation. Imagine a german person who never has learned english. Show this person the written word "cheers". I am pretty sure the person will say somthing like "chairs". Thats because german "e" is pronounced different in german than in english. The next time you meet a foreigner speaking your native language, pay attention to their pronounciation. Much of what they say, will be understood. But you will probably think it would be easier to understand if the persons pronounciation would be better. Well, I think chinese people think the same way when they listen to many of us talking chinese.

That said, in my opinion "tones" are important in every language. As AlexBlackman wrote before, chinese people learn tones from childhood. All people do learn their language-"tones" in childhood. The same is important for us learning chinese. Start with tones! It is almost like math. If you not master addition, substitution, divide and multiply, you will not be able to figure out a complex formula. Have the basics in place (tones). Then your progress learning will be way faster then who do not master the tones.

Somebody mentioned age. It is not a question of age, it is a question of will. I myself am 53 and started my journey into chinese about one year ago. It is never to late to learn something new!

Have a nice day!

Regards,

Haojun

[Guest realmayo]

How about:

 

 

English people DON'T learn the difference between short 'i' and long 'i' (as in 'did' versus 'deed').

 

English people aren't taught about long and short 'i', they are totally immersed in correctly spoken English at the young age they learn best.

Long and short 'i' as a linguistic concept don't exist to them, they  are subsumed into a matter of right and wrong pronouncation.

 

Using the wrong 'i' is as alien and ridiculous to them as using the wrong consonant or tone is in Chinese 

 

You are too old to get this right through assimulation; You must make full use of your adult mind to master English through other methods but never forget to LEARN YOUR VOWELS

[AlexBlackman]

@Real Mayo

I see what you did there.

 

@Haojun - You are right, P.S. I really respect brave enough to tackle a radically different new language in their 50s

[Guest realmayo]

Tee-hee. I don't know if it's correct to do so but it seems to make sense to think of tones as an element of pronunciation which people who haven't been exposed to them already find particularly difficult to learn.

 

Because of that, I'm not sure that tones need any special attention as tones. I mean, it took me 10 years before I discovered that 绿 and 路 are pronounced differently.

 

So I have some sympathy with what Xiao Kui says. It's impractical for most people to concentrate so much on pronunciation at the start that they never develop any short-term bad habits. That's true for any language and true whether you're talking tones or consonants or vowels.

[renzhe]

En English this occasionally leads to problems: I've met many people who pronounce "fifteen" like "fiftin" (confused with "fifty") and the like. It's also hard to understand native speakers whose prosody and pronunciation are very different from what you're used to.

It's just that the potential for confusion is higher with Mandarin and tones. It is exactly like "short i vs. long ee" in principle, but more trouble in practice, so it's quite important to get it right.

Nobody will learn tones perfectly and speak with no mistakes from the very beginning, but I think that it's important to be conscious of the problems and get into the habit of looking out for these errors and correcting yourself.

[tysond]

I just spent two weeks in Spanish speaking countries with not very much English exposure. I'm don't usually go to these places.

It was extremely difficult to understand five, fifteen, fifty and other numbers. Sometimes whole sentences were completely unintelligible due to pronunciation issues. Sometime I used body language to intuit what they were trying to say and only then realised they actually said it, but extremely poorly.

I keep this experience in mind when thinking about tone or other pronucation in Chinese.

Different cities in China have a different bar in correctness. In my experience Beijing can be pretty tough. Shanghai very Accomodating.

[haojun]

 

English people aren't taught about long and short 'i', they are totally immersed in correctly spoken English at the young age they learn best.

Long and short 'i' as a linguistic concept don't exist to them, they  are subsumed into a matter of right and wrong pronouncation.

Yes, you are right; children learn their spoken language from their surroundings. However, “correctly” spoken English do not necessarily immerse English children. Due to the complexity of rules in linguistics, not every English person is speaking correct English. Of course, this is true for other nationalities/languages, too.

 

 

You are too old to get this right through assimulation; You must make full use of your adult mind to master English through other methods but never forget to LEARN YOUR VOWELS

In addition, I disagree on what you say about assimilation. When I went to Denmark, there was no real opportunity to go to school to learn Danish. Evening schools where I could learn Danish did not exist in the area and I had a fulltime job to take care of. Therefore, I did learn the basics of the language from books. However, the real kick-off happened, when I went to computer-school three years later. I was together with Danes all day long and I learned the most of the language by assimilation.

 

In my opinion, that is the same with learning Chinese. The basics of a language and many words can be learned from books, by using your mind. Moreover, it is true; it is getting harder when you get older. Nevertheless, learning the real language happens when blending with native people. Then assimilation kicks in, no matter which age. Imagine, you have finished language school and you work in an environment with Chinese people. You do not have much time to think of, if your grammar is right. If you make mistakes, in time they will be corrected “automatically” because you are immersed in the language environment and your language skill will adopt much of how it is said by others. Of course, there are exceptions to those rules. Some people never get the pronunciation or grammar right.

 

To get back to my first post, my point is, that learning the basics right, will make it a lot easier for yourself to learn the language and to get understood better.

[haojun]

 

 

I just spent two weeks in Spanish speaking countries with not very much English exposure. I'm don't usually go to these places.

It was extremely difficult to understand five, fifteen, fifty and other numbers. Sometimes whole sentences were completely unintelligible due to pronunciation issues. Sometime I used body language to intuit what they were trying to say and only then realised they actually said it, but extremely poorly.

I keep this experience in mind when thinking about tone or other pronucation in Chinese. 

Yes, after such an experience it is easier to understand why pronunciation is important.