Developing an ear for tones

[eion_padraig]

So I've been studying Chinese for about 7 years now, though not continuously. For 5 of those 7 years I've been living in China, but in Shanghai and Guangzhou so I'm not surrounded by especially great Mandarin speakers. Most of my learning has been one on one tutoring with experienced teachers and self-study with short stints in classrooms with other Chinese language learners.

 

In my group of friends, I have some Chinese friends whom we only speak in Chinese, but I would say much of the day I'm in an English speaking environment. Other than a few weeks here and there where I've done traveling and been in immersion environments, my work environment is primarily an English language one. Three or four times a month I hang out with friends for extended periods of time (3 - 6 hours) where we only speak Mandarin, though other times I'll be with folks where we switch in and out of Chinese and English depending on the situation.

 

So I've been wondering if I will ever develop a way for identifying tones by ear. My listening skills in Chinese are fair to good. With everyday conversations I have no problem and these days I can even isolate new words when they are otherwise used in a familiar language/grammar pattern. With a new word, I can fairly accurately repeat the word with proper tones if I've just heard someone say it in isolation. However, I still have a hard time saying, "Oh, that is a fourth tone followed by a first tone." Even on the basic listening practice where they drill you on tones, I probably get them correct 85% of the time.

 

I find myself understanding words much more through context than necessarily tones. So I know when the word is 上海 and not  伤害 through context. As a native speaker of Chinese, who is not a music (no perfect pitch ability, not even close), is it realistic to think I will be able to consciously identify tones. I find a lot of other native English speakers who have much strong Chinese language skills than me say they also identify through context more than tonal sound.

 

This seems a separate skill over speaking. In isolation I can say words correctly with tones, though in sentences my teachers have said it drops to about 80% - 90% accuracy. When I'm saying phrases that I'm confident are correct, Chinese folks understand what I'm saying almost all of the time.

 

So do native non-tonal speakers who are not musicians develop a strong ability to identify tones used in normal everyday speaking? If so, is it just a matter of more immersion? Are there other ways to work on it? Is this even a crucial skill to work towards? I feel strongly that more accurate use of tones is an important skill, but I'm up in the air on the listening side. Any research being done on this question that is accessible for a non-academic?

Any intermediate to advanced speakers feel that they've developed this ability? When did it start to happen on your language learning path?

 

Eion

 

[LiMo]

I can't add too much but as you've probably noticed ages ago even Chinese people often can't immediately identify what tone a word is, it simply is or isn't correct. Furthermore, I've heard that speakers of other dialects, when learning mandarin, often have trouble with the tones despite being native speakers of a tonal language to begin with. That suggests to me that tones are basically just hard. This situation may be akin to reaching "full native" fluency with no trace of an accent. It's theoretically possible, but who has the time or inclination to practice for the necessary amount of time. It might be something you achieve when you're 80 after living in the country for 60 years only with Chinese people, but otherwise it's unlikely to happen. Just my rapid on the fly guess. Time for dinner!

[XiaoXi]

Chinese do often pronounce tones wrongly but that's no different from us speaking English and saying the odd word incorrectly...but in my experience they can almost always tell if you say a tone wrong. But its not that hard, I find I can do it too. I certainly pronounce tones wrongly often but almost always notice and I can also tell when Chinese pronounce tones incorrectly. It does happen, especially when they're native language is actually a dialect and so often the tones actually are different in their own dialect.

 

I've always found it quite easy to pick out the tones and I have no perfect pitch either. In fact I even tried to learn relative pitch/perfect pitch since I'm a pianist but failed to do so so I'm sure anyone can learn the tones of mandarin since there are only four.

 

But this is primarily a mistake in learning, assuming that Chinese mandarin _has_ tones and that they are a separate entity. All words, in any language are pronounced with some kind of tonal inflection, very often just as distinct as with mandarin and moreover, often very consistent tones. Anyway, that's another subject which you can read more about on my website if you have nothing better to do.

[abcdefg]

Yesterday (in Kunming) I wanted to take a taxi to the Golden Spring Hotel. 金泉酒店。

 

Driver was friendly, but couldn't figure out where I wanted to go. I said it again, this time real careful about the tones. Jin1 quan 2 and added 黄金的金，温泉的泉。I also told him the nearest major cross streets (we were not far away.)

 

Still no glimmer of understanding. So I told him to turn right at the light and go straight, I would direct him to it, I had been there before. 前面的红灯往右转，然后一直走。A couple blocks later he saw the hotel's sign, pointed and said, “哦，你是说，金泉酒店？” Jin and quan were two fourth tones.

 

As he pulled in, he said, "Oh, I thought you were saying 四川的川  and it didn't make any sense." He was saying 金泉 with the usual two fourth tones. Kunming is the land of fourth tones.

 

I suppose the point is that no matter how careful you are, there will still sometimes be confusion. The more I travel in China, the more I find that "non-standard" pronunciations are the norm instead of the exception.

[imron]

Oh, I thought you were saying 四川的川  and it didn't make any sense

 

If you pronounced it Jin1 chuan 2 as you mentioned in your post (I'm not sure if this was a typo or not because you posted the correct pinyin 'quan' later on), then there might be another reason this happened.

 

The -uan of chuan and the -uan of quan are actually different sounds.  quan is actually qüan, but the umlauts are left off the u because there are no regular 'u' sounds that follow q (likewise with j and x).

[XiaoXi]

Yes its sounds like a typical foreigner mistake, unable to distinguish between CH and Q and perhaps also X and SH. The fact he thought you were saying 四川的川 shows that it most certainly was that, not so much to do with tones.

[889]

Is there some technical reason the Pinyin masters didn't go with quen and chuan to make the distinction clearer?

[abcdefg]

Imron -- "Chuan" was a typo. I will go back and fix it. Should have been "quan." (But maybe it was a revealing error. I've had trouble getting to that hotel before.)

 

The quan 泉 that I usually hear is a very "closed" sound. Very different from the 全 of 全部。

[imron]

Is there some technical reason the Pinyin masters didn't go with quen and chuan to make the distinction clearer?

-uen is actually the sound of wen, which when written as a final is written as -un.  So maybe to avoid confusion with that.  But my guess is as good as yours.

[XiaoXi]

Is there some technical reason the Pinyin masters didn't go with quen and chuan to make the distinction clearer? 

 

Its not about the distinction being clear or not, the problem is 1. that we have only on 'CH' sound in English and 2. with pinyin itself. For Chinese people, pinyin can be very useful but its very different from the way foreigners use it. When Chinese first encounter pinyin, they already know how to pronounce everything so all it does is help them with a character they don't know how to say. But for foreigners we rely on pinyin as first port of call, in fact for some, they _only_ learn Chinese with pinyin. This presents a huge problem because when reading pinyin we use preconceptions from our own language to guess how to say them. We see 'ping' and at first think of English words like 'ring' and generally call on our preconception of what an 'ing' sound should be.

 

Really, Chinese should begin from sounds and characters alone. In this day and age its not necessary to use a book with pinyin above it. This was the reason for pinyin's invention in the first place. Nowadays, anyone can read Chinese and have sound accompanying the words.

[889]

English and other speakers used to the Roman alphabet would expect chuan and quan to rhyme, but they don't. This is a persistent problem with a in Pinyin. Think Xi'an and xian; xien would be much clearer, I'd think.

[XiaoXi]

Yes, great point 889. I think Chinese people don't even realise that but us foreigners are staring at the pinyin trying to make head or tail of it. If you were to just show me the word 'bridge' and then say it then that's the end of it. Why not the same with Chinese? You just show me the word 泉 and tell me how to pronounce it then that's all there is. Pinyin is unnecessary for foreigners. We've come to the point where if you're learning from a book outside of classroom, ie self study then you're somewhat old fashioned. At the very least you should be using a program with audio along with the words so why do you need pinyin as well? Its like me showing you a picture of an apple, saying 'apple' and then also writing down the word 'apple' for you. Its like enough already, we get it.