Read This Text Aloud

[Demonic_Duck]

@rezaf mk2: honestly, if anything, the slower version sounds more accurate. I guess your “离” of “距离” and your “前” of “面前” might be a little on the low side.

 

@tooironic: “就” sounds like “周”; also,  “世” of “世界” sounds a bit low, though that might actually be within the bounds of native speaker variation now I think about it.

[tooironic]

The lowness at the beginning is how we speak in formal announcements. You start low, then draw certain words out, usually those with fourth tone like 上 (in Taiwan I noticed they tend to sustain second-tone words), then it gets higher as you keep speaking. I have no idea what the linguistic term for that is, but it is separate from the tones of the words themselves.

 

As for 就, we often don't pronounce words in their entirety when speaking quickly. Just like in English, we say sandwich, not sand-witch. Again, I don't know the linguistic term for this, maybe someone with the relevant training can provide it.

 

[Demonic_Duck]

I think the linguistic term for the first thing simply comes under the umbrella of "intonation".

 

As for the second thing, I don't know the term either, but I'm not entirely convinced that's what's going on. Could you give an example of speech (announcement, line in a film etc.) where “就” is pronounced [zhōu]?

[tooironic]

I didn't pronounce it as 周. I just didn't draw out the word. This is a normal way of speaking. It would be weird to pronounce it as jiiiiu.

[yueni]

Comments on the voice posts until now:

 

 

 

 

@Demonic_Duck: I actually like your spoken Mandarin accent, because it isn't super flat the way Chinese sounds when spoken by most native speakers of non-tonal languages. It's very understandable and neutral-sounding, but it is also quite apparent that you aren't a native Chinese speaker and an English speaker. I think your 离 was definitely not voiced enough, but I had no problems with your 爱. I actually thought that your 却 wasn't quite right though. I thought the [e] part of the [que] was too truncated, leaving me wondering for a sec if you were trying to say 去 or 却.

 

 

 

 

 

@rezaf: For some reason your Chinese accent reminds me of my Turkish classmate when I was at BLCU. It's not quite the same, but similar enough for me to draw some parallels! In your second recording, the one thing that really stood out to me was that your second tones weren't as full as they should be. I think they should go up a little more so it is clear you are saying second tones.

 

 

 

 

 

@Orpheus: Your tones and accent were all spot on, but the [ü] sound seems to be problematic for you. For instance, 距离 sounded like [jìlí], and to follow what @Demonic_Duck has already mentioned, 世界 sounded like [shèjiè].

 

 

 

 

 

@Mr John: @Demonic_Duck already pointed out the most glaring pronunciation errors, so I'm not going to repeat them. One thing that I really noticed upon listening to your recording a third time was your handling of the [e] sound, which, incidentally, is a common pronunciation error made by native English speakers because of how similar the sound is to the one we make in English. In English, the sound is made in the front of the mouth, whereas in Chinese (especially northern Chinese) the sound is made... not quite at the back of the throat, but right at the spot where your jaw meets your neck. =P Sorry, I'm not a linguist, so my explanations aren't that great.

 

 

 

 

 

@arreke: Are you learning Mandarin in the southern China? I felt like there were some pronunciations and tones that aren't "standard Mandarin", but your Chinese is quite understandable, and I'm not sure if that has to do with influences from your native tongue, or if it is natural Chinese-learner mistakes. For example, the 界 sounds more like a third tone than a fourth tone. The 远 sounds like a fourth tone instead of a third tone. Your 死 should be a third tone, and not a fourth tone. 

 

 

 

 

 

@skylee: Such a typical Cantonese-speaker's accent! =D Even if I hadn't seen what your native language was, I totally would've known you were a Cantonese speaker.

 

 

 

 

 

@imron: That's a very nasal-sounding Chinese, but I don't know if that's just the way you sound, or if that's the way you speak Chinese. =P 

 

 

 

 

 

@LiMo: @__@ You sounded really aggressive! Haha. The philosophical nature of the sentence was lost behind the aggressiveness of your fourth tone! Were you overstressing the pronunciation while you recorded? I think if you relaxed a little it would flow a little better. If you wanted to post pronunciation samples for critiques, isn't there already a thread for it? I think I saw this one: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/19910-post-a-sample-of-your-pronunciation-here/ ?

 

 

 

 

 

@tooironic: Overall understandable, but I think some tones were off. For instance, 世界上 didn't sound like you were pronouncing their tones at all? I actually agree with @Demonic_Duck about your pronunciation of 就. It sounded like a cross between 猪 and 周 to me. You don't have to drag out the i sound like a lot of new learners do, but definitely slip a truncated "yuh" sound between the [j] and the u , just so it sounds more like 就. I know you are trying to follow native Chinese speaker conventions of truncations, but there's a slight issue. 

 

 

 

 

 

You know how sometimes native Chinese speakers (especially those who have reached a certain level of English ability) try to truncate how they pronounce English words to follow native English speaker conventions, but somehow, due to accent, pronunciation conventions unique to Chinese speakers, [some other linguistic reason I do not know], etc, their truncations sound... off? Best case scenario, you know what they want to say or are trying to say, it doesn't really impede understanding, you ignore it. Worst case scenario: you mishear it, misunderstandings occur, potential WWIII ensues (depending on scenario and context obviously, but this is a worst case scenario, after all). I think that is what is happening here. If you listen carefully to native Chinese speakers, they somehow slip a truncated sound between the [j] and the . It's not overbearing, they don't [jiiiiiiiu], but that sound is there.

 

 

 

 

 

A similar scenario I often run into with native Chinese speakers speaking English is "can" vs "can't" (and all other similar words). I mean, sometimes, the distinction isn't clear when a native English speaker says it. However, for the native Chinese speaker, for whatever reason, they have problems making that "t" ending without the word "can't" sounding like "can-te". So when they try to truncate it without the "te" sound, telling the difference between "can" and "can't" is just really difficult.

 

 

 

 

 

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Conclusions drawn:

 

 

 

 

 

Chinese accents of native English speakers are all over the board, but their Chinese tends to sound "flatter" than a native Chinese person, I think because fully pronouncing the tones the way native Chinese people do naturally and effortlessly requires a lot of thought and effort for the non-native speaker, which often (especially in new learners) results in overly aggressive tones or over-emphasis and over-pronunciation of words.

 

 

 

 

 

I don't think there were enough speakers of other languages for me to draw any other conclusions!

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't really critique @skylee's accent because I felt like that was an accepted Chinese accent. I felt it would be similar to my correcting how Australians pronounce the word "no" or correcting the Canadian pronunciation of "about". =P I also didn't critique myself, because well I don't feel qualified to. 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, @Demonic_Duck, I knew I should have 断句 this way: 而是/我就站在/你面前... but I'd already had two false starts, so I was just like F*** this, and just posted it. =P To be honest though, I think the text was a little too short for us to really get a good macro-level listen at overall accent trends for non-native Chinese speakers. It also didn't cover the whole range of sounds available in Chinese, so some sounds which might be difficult for certain people, the [ü] sound for instance, might not be for others. One sound that is sometimes problematic and confusing for people is the [x] sound, but it wasn't present in the text.

 

[Basil]

Gawd， I've got cloth ears compared to you guys...

[arreke]

• arreke: “世界” sounds like [shījiě]; “遥远” sounds like [yáoyuàn]; “距离” sounds like [jùli]; “死” sounds like [sì]; “面前” sounds like miánqiàn. As 889 says, your pronunciation of retroflex sounds definitely sounds like a southerner, but not to the extent where it's difficult to distinguish your from [sh] sounds, so I don't think even the most prescriptive of linguists would try to claim it was "incorrect".

 

Thanks for the evaluation, I haven'd paid much attention to the tones at the beginning of learning Chinese, now you see the result ))

As I said, I studied Chinese in Guangzhou, some teachers pronounced 谢谢 as [sie sie], some did [shie shie], the rest sound like somewhere in the middle between  and [sh], even here in Beijing I often see many Chinese who pronounce it differently

 

@arreke: Are you learning Mandarin in the southern China? I felt like there were some pronunciations and tones that aren't "standard Mandarin", but your Chinese is quite understandable, and I'm not sure if that has to do with influences from your native tongue, or if it is natural Chinese-learner mistakes. For example, the 界 sounds more like a third tone than a fourth tone. The 远 sounds like a fourth tone instead of a third tone. Your 死 should be a third tone, and not a fourth tone. 

 

I've been asked that many times ))

It's true, I've learned Chinese in Guangzhou

[Demonic_Duck]

To be honest though, I think the text was a little too short for us to really get a good macro-level listen at overall accent trends for non-native Chinese speakers. It also didn't cover the whole range of sounds available in Chinese, so some sounds which might be difficult for certain people, the [ü] sound for instance, might not be for others. One sound that is sometimes problematic and confusing for people is the [x] sound, but it wasn't present in the text.

 

Fair point, it was a little on the short side, though that was partly intentional to keep it accessable for as many people to record as possible.

 

There was no [x] in the text, but there were several [j]s and [q]s, which are phonetically very similar sounds. People who have trouble with [x] tend to also have trouble with [j] and/or [q].

 

Good analysis, and interesting to see where you picked up things I hadn't noticed!

[yueni]

@Basil: Oops, sorry, missed yours! You sound so relaxed! The 离 [li] sounded like 列 [lie], so hold back the tendency to [e] at the end of your [li]. You somehow don't fully pronounce the [n] portion of 前. It reminds me of a French friend of mine, who does that with [-n] ending words. =P Do you happen to speak French?

 

 

 

Gawd， I've got cloth ears compared to you guys...

 

You've just got to listen more. When I was studying for my interpreting degree, I spent hours listening to speeches by native Chinese speakers, and also to myself butchering both the Chinese and English languages ~__~ Listening is actually good training for your ears and mouth, because you'll slowly pick up sounds that aren't present in English, but that you need for Chinese (or whatever language you are learning). Your brain just discards "unnecessary sounds" like tones, especially in the beginning, because you don't need to recognize those distinctions in your native tongue. The more you expose yourself to those sounds, the more you'll start picking up on them, and the faster you'll be able to produce those sounds, or at least make a valiant attempt at producing them.

[rezaf]

It's so good to participate in one of these projects from time to time. All these years(based on one of my books) I always thought 面前's 前 should be a neutral tone so I wouldn't pronounce it as a second tone. Now that I'm paying attention it seems native speakers do pronounce it as a second tone.

[Demonic_Duck]

Now I think about it, that ([miànqián] vs. [miànqian]) could also be within the bounds of normal native speaker variation.

[Orpheus]

Thanks for all the feedback. I very much agree with yueni's conclusion that the Chinese spoken by English native speakers tends to sound a bit flat. I can't pinpoint what the exact problem is, but it seems as though the tones were not fully pronounced or the intonation was a bit off.

[Bhas_Ku_Go]

Hi all!

 

I just registered to post in this thread. I thought the idea was fun, and since I am coming here regularly to read up on many topics I might as well register. So here is my reading of the poem. Can you guess what my mother tongue is? Comments on my pronounciation and tones in general are, of course, also very welcome.

 

I am Austrian. My first language is Austrian German. I have been living in Taipei, Taiwan, for 2 years now and that's also where I learned all my Chinese. Some issues I think I have (those might or might not be recognizable in this short recording): mixing up of 'b' and 'p' and 'd' and 't' especially when they appear within the same word; a tendency to reduce 'uo' to 'ou' and 'ou to a short 'o'; pronouncing of the 'e'-vowel in words like 色 more like a German 'ö' with rounded lips in front of your mouth; turning the tone combination '3-2' into '2-2' (or '2-3') without proper care; and, as will most likely also be audible in this short piece, really weird sentence intonation and prosody, forced stops at the wrong point etc.

 

I also "forced" my partner, who doesn't have an account here, to recite the poem. She got a bit mixed up in the end on the actual lyrics but the file should still serve its purpose I guess.

 

She is Taiwanese. Her first language basically is Taiwanese Mandarin, but she is also fluent in Taiwanese and Hakka (somewhat) as her parents are Minnan and Hakka speakers.

 

P.S. Sorry for the bad quality. I recorded these files on my phone without any microphone.

Distance in between.wav

Record_0012.wav

[Basil]

No I don't speak French. I did have a fairly good Beijing 'er' before I moved down south. So it could be that which means I have fairly weak final 'n's...

 

Thanks duck and yueni for the analysis, very interesting!

 

As the duck said, I think we need a larger sample range, especially those who have only been studying for a short while!

 

So don't be shy...

[heifeng]

Fine, I'm a glutton for punishment & haven't recorded in ages, so I'll post mine and another one for fun from someone who was listening to these with me and basically memorized and recited it for this lil' "project"

 

I will wait to post my nationality* for file CF朗读练习 

 

I was going to give a hint for the 2nd Guineapig recording but I'll keep it interesting and let you guess away.

 

 

___

*Editing fun: Hint it's not where my Polar bear tracker link is pointing you....wow, the polar bears are all partying up in Svalbard it seems!

CF朗读练习.wma

CF Guineapig.wma

[heifeng]

Recording 1

Midwest USA (big city not the boonies though)

 

Recording 2

山东郭屯镇

[Basil]

I did feel that the guinea pig was some Chinese person's mum..

[Pokarface]

I'll participate!!!

My Chinese lesson is about to start, so I'll record later when I have free time.

[AlexBlackman]

Here's mine.

 

I'm British/Australian. 5-21 in the UK.

Alex.mp3

[陳德聰]

@tooironic, I've heard you speaking on radio shows before, so I was a bit surprised when I listened to this recording. Would you mind doing another recording of your actual natural speaking rather than affecting your speaking with all those pauses and such? I played it back several times and I don't think you pronounced it like 周, but when you isolate the word in the recording, it certainly sounds like 周. The thing is, I think words that are not focused in the sentence probably do not have to be fully realized tonally in order for the listener to understand. I will try to post a recording of mine later today.