Is there any benefit to studying the pinyin of individual characters independent of meaning?

[roddy]

Ok, let's try and clarify things here. Xiaoxi, take an independent student starting out with say NPCR or Boya Chinese or something like that, or a university student starting Chinese 101. That's going to involve some Pinyin use. How would you change those courses?

[imron]

If I'm not mistaken, I think Xiaoxi is advocating having an electronic version of those texts, where instead of written pinyin, you just tap the word on the screen, and you get the pronunciation.  So still the exact same texts, just using audio instead of pinyin.

 

Even with audio, in a situation like that I still think pinyin in useful for foreign adult learners because it will help them distinguish sounds that their adult ears might not be able to distinguish clearly due to not really existing in their L1.

[XiaoXi]

If they can't speak, then they haven't learnt to speak.

 

This is getting a bit ridiculous - no....... They are learning a language which includes understanding just as much as speaking. If you've actually read or seen any Krashen then you'll know he describes children as being able to speak (and understand spoken word for that matter) due to the listening they have been doing for years before they say anything.

 

Going out of your way to NOT understand what is spoken is not a good way to learn, and has nothing to do with Krashen.

 

You've just said that speaking is all that comprises learning a language and then you've gone on to say, without quoting me at all that I've somehow suggested we should go out of a our way not to understand what is being said? Where in the world are people getting these ideas.

 

All I am saying is: use audio, in whatever form rather than pinyin wherever possible. How in the world did you get that I've been saying we should go out of our way to not understand what is being said?

 

I am neither honestly telling you that, nor have any idea what on Earth you are talking about.

 

That is very clear based on your responses. But it was a good way to avoid the question nonetheless.

 

When I need to know how something is read, I ask my girlfriend. If she's not around, I ask a student. If nobody is around, I pick up my huge dictionary and look up the pronunciation in pinyin. It is a useful tool, and I don't see how my Chinese skills would be improved by not being able to look things up in a dictionary, or read Chinese names in foreign press.

 

Well then you're already doing what I've been saying then! You're going for real audio wherever possible and only resorting to pinyin when there is nothing else. I have my pleco dictionary set up to audio only.

 

I think it needs to be pointed out that children don't usually say a word until they are at least 1 year old and some don't utter a meaningful sentence until they are 3 years old.

 

This means they can be listening for up to 3 years.

 

Yes good point, and they don't stop listening at that point either. Even once kids start speaking they typically don't speak an awful lot. So they are still acquiring more and more. One of the strongest points of a kid learning a language is that they only speak when they are ready and don't feel any pressure to do so any earlier - very different to adults.

[XiaoXi]

Yes exactly Imron.

 

Many absolute beginners start with Pimsleur and thus have no need for pinyin. You may feel you want pinyin but that is because everyone likes to stay in their 'comfort zone'. There's nothing more comfortable than seeing an extremely foreign looking Chinese character being written using the alphabet you are so familiar with. The problem is it leads you to make preconceptions about how that character might really be pronounced by interpreting the romanisation wrongly, and also it leads you to get more and more familiar with pinyin when you should be getting more and more familiar with the characters and directly associating the sounds with them.

[roddy]

You only interpret the romanisation wrongly if you've learned it wrong in the first place, and as you said earlier, it takes 17 minutes to learn. We've gone over that umpteen times and at best it's not an argument against pinyin, it's an argument FOR bopomofo or some other phonetic scheme.

 

I don't think you ever responded to this. The links in there - the actual studies - directly contradict you.

 

Nobody's arguing we read books full of pinyin. But if a beginner is uncertain on the pronunciation of the word they've heard, having pinyin in the vocab list or on the back of the flashcard - well, I think you're massively overestimating the harm it does. Or if you have an excellent resource, but there's no audio and lots of new vocab and you want to keep a list.... scribble the pinyin down next to it to save you looking it up again if you forget. Everyone moves away from pinyin pretty quickly anyway, for the simple reason that once you get past beginner resources, it's virtually not there.

[renzhe]

It was fun and instructuve, I think I'll follow this thread passively from now on.

[Flickserve]

Yes exactly Imron.

Many absolute beginners start with Pimsleur and thus have no need for pinyin. You may feel you want pinyin but that is because everyone likes to stay in their 'comfort zone'. There's nothing more comfortable than seeing an extremely foreign looking Chinese character being written using the alphabet you are so familiar with. The problem is it leads you to make preconceptions about how that character might really be pronounced by interpreting the romanisation wrongly, and also it leads you to get more and more familiar with pinyin when you should be getting more and more familiar with the characters and directly associating the sounds with them.

I don't really think it's a problem. There are other languages that use romanisation and are pronounced differently to English. It's a further step forward to associate a character to a sound. That's probably why characters are introduced pretty quickly to learners of Chinese. To get it really accurate, there isn't any other way but to be using the words in real life conversations and practice. And we know how slow a process that can be.

I learnt to speak the majority of my Chinese Cantonese by listening and copying. I used romanisation for a few months and then moved on from it. When I did move on, I didn't use characters either - just spoke and tried to remember the sounds. My tones can still be off though.

[Shelley]

@XiaoXi May I direct you to an article in Scientific American (November 2015) by Patricia K. Kuhl.

 

This article explains how children learn languages. It is quite a long article so I am not going to attempt to summarise or give extracts, its needs reading in whole from start to finish. There is also some additional reading listed at the end of the article by the same author, I haven't read these yet.

 

I am sorry I can't direct you to a digital version (payment is required for a digital version), you will have to seek out a paper copy.