Mixing up Tones 1 & 4 in spoken speech. Exercises to remedy?

[calibre2001]

I have this problem of mixing up first and fourth tones in my actual spoken speech.

For example, 下面 (below) ends up as 蝦麵 (shrimp noodles) and 一般(normally) becomes  一半(half).

Sometimes, 到 becomes 刀.

 

I’m aware of what 1^st and 4^th tones sound like but I also suspect in real life the distinction becomes blurred if people speak fast.

I wouldn’t make this mistake if I were practicing pronunciation off a HSK list though.

It’s not that I am unaware of the correct tone but come actual application, this error is already internalised.

 

I was wondering if there are any exercises to fix this?

In the past I had thought of practicing individual Tone 1  & Tone 4 characters separately or Tone1-Tone4, Tone4-Tone1 combination words off a HSK list.

[Guest realmayo]

This is just a thought: I think one difference between the two tones is their length with the first tone generally long, the fourth tone generally short; perhaps consciously paying attention to that might help you a bit by coming at the problem from a slightly new angle.

[iand]

I've heard that the most commonly confused tones are 2nd with 3rd and 1st with 4th, because 2nd and 3rd both start low, and 1st and 4th both start high. Anyway maybe you could try SpeakGoodChinese.

[Jan Finster]

On 9/20/2016 at 8:35 AM, realmayo said:

This is just a thought: I think one difference between the two tones is their length with the first tone generally long, the fourth tone generally short; perhaps consciously paying attention to that might help you a bit by coming at the problem from a slightly new angle.

 

I recently wondered if the four tones have the same or slightly different duration (?)

 

On every chart the lengths look the same (see below for example from wiki (allsetlearning)). Is the fourth tone really shorter or does it just appear so because it "exlosively" goes all the way down?

 

[Flickserve]

21 minutes ago, Jan Finster said:

Is the fourth tone really shorter or does it just appear so because it "exlosively" goes all the way down?

 

A bit shorter and a bit louder. 

[amytheorangutan]

On 9/21/2016 at 9:35 AM, iand said:

 

I've heard that the most commonly confused tones are 2nd with 3rd and 1st with 4th, because 2nd and 3rd both start low, and 1st and 4th both start high.

 

Yup true for both. I’m literally still living this nightmare. With 1 and 4 at the end of the sentence because I’m normally not confident with my speech anyway so my 4th always sounds like 1 as if I’m unsure ?

[js6426]

A friend recently pointed out that 4th tone is also my biggest issue, in particular words that consist of a 4th tone followed by a 1st tone.  I really struggle getting from that low pitch back up to the high pitch for the first tone, and so it usually comes out sounding like a 3rd tone followed by a 1st, or I speak that word so slowly that I sound like a robot.  Other than practicing and building up speed I'm not sure how to combat this.

[Guest realmayo]

In my opinion another reason for confusing 1 and 4 is that some learners perhaps quickly associate the 4th tone with 'additional emphasis': short, sharp, maybe a bit aggressive. It's a 'power-sound' (the best way I can describe it).

 

But a 1st tone is also, I think, a power sound, achieved by maintaining the sound unchanged for a little longer than would otherwise be natural.

 

But when you start learning you only really associate a power sound with 4, because you're told it sounds like you're angry in English. So as soon as you hear an emphasis, you assume it's 4th tone. But it could well be 1st tone: "high and level" doesn't sound like a description of a power sound, but really, it is.

 

2 hours ago, js6426 said:

Other than practicing and building up speed I'm not sure how to combat this.

 

If you feel like you're hitting a brick wall, perhaps shift tack and focus for a while on getting a perfect 3rd tone followed by 1st tone? The more confident you are with your production of that combination, the more sensitive you might be to straying into its territory when trying a 4 + 1 combo?

 

But before all of that try to become excellent - really excellent - at distinguishing 4+1 vs 3+1 when listening. Once the ears can lead, the mouth will surely follow.

 

 

[EnergyReaper]

1 hour ago, realmayo said:

 

But before all of that try to become excellent - really excellent - at distinguishing 4+1 vs 3+1 when listening. Once the ears can lead, the mouth will surely follow

Agree. In the picture Jan Finster posted, we can see 4's starting pitch is much higher than 3's. I think the key point is familiar with the starting pitches of 4 and 3.

[Jan Finster]

8 hours ago, Flickserve said:

A bit shorter and a bit louder. 

 

Sounds about right to me, but do you have any source for that? I googled and could not find anything....(!?) 

 

Regarding 4th tone. I was taught you should imagine a chopping knife. Is it possible to "overdo" the 4th tone? As in making it sound too sharp (whip-like)? 

 

Another question that cam to be the other day:

When you have a 4th tone followed by a 2nd tone. Do you guys go 5-1 and then 3-5 [so with a gap at "2"] or do you smoothly sail down and up like a "V" (5-1-5)? 

[EnergyReaper]

1 hour ago, Jan Finster said:

As in making it sound too sharp (whip-like)? 

I just watched Yoyo Chinese Pinyin Chart, and in my opinion, her 3th and 4th tones are a little bit short and stiff, similar to "whip-like". When native Chinese speak a single 3th or a single 4th, it usually sounds longer and more musical. If you have VPN to help you access bilibili.com, try this video 普通话教学声调纠正-理论篇. The teacher is a broadcast anchor.

 

1 hour ago, Jan Finster said:

When you have a 4th tone followed by a 2nd tone. Do you guys go 5-1 and then 3-5 [so with a gap at "2"] or do you smoothly sail down and up like a "V" (5-1-5)? 

If you mean a 4th+2nd word that you speak without pause, I think it's like 5-3-5. In this way the 4th doesn't have time to go down to 1. It becomes shorter than a single 4th, similar to "whip-like", directly down to 3.

 

[Guest realmayo]

1 hour ago, Jan Finster said:

Is it possible to "overdo" the 4th tone?

 

I think so. If you can find say some old guy to speak kindly and softly and gently and slowly - I'd say you'd still hear his fourth tones as perfect fourth tones, but zero aggression. Or think of someone gently teasing a friend, 你到底去不去， speaking those 去s through a smile. So this at least suggests to me it's perfectly possible to pronounce 4th tones softly, not sharply. But this is not formal advice - just what I hear in my mind's ear from a long time ago, and not from living in the north where maybe they're crisper/harsher?

 

1 hour ago, Jan Finster said:

smoothly sail down and up like a "V" (5-1-5)? 

 

me: not this. Huge risk here is that people will hear your 2nd tone as an exaggerated 3rd tone. It took me a lot of remedial work to stop my 2nd tones sounding like 3rd tones and it was because I was starting the 2nd tone too low, which seemed to be a cue - to a native speaker - that they were hearing a third tone (assuming there's a pause following).

 

(Edit: and I think that kind of matches what @EnergyReaper just wrote: either way you want to avoid rising from position 1, as it were.)

 

I think there's a good case for treating that tone diagram the same way an English speaker would treat the letter 'q' or 'x' when starting pinyin: it's a very rough guide to the pronunciation, but no more then that.

 

There's some free software called Praat into which you can play a snippet of your own speech or of a recording of someone else's, and it'll show you the tone, visually. The real world is nothing like that diagram. Seeing results from Praat shouldn't make you discouraged: instead it's just a reminder to focus on what you hear native speakers saying, and try to mimic it, the same way that you shouldn't be thinking of the English q sound whenever you see q in pinyin.

 

Here's a long but fascinating thread: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/43798-accent-improvement-more-natural-sounding-tones/

And one with some - I think - quite surprising or eye-openining examples: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/52980-2nd-tone-at-the-end-of-a-sentence/

[Jan Finster]

19 minutes ago, EnergyReaper said:

If you mean a 4th+2nd word that you speak without pause, I think it's like 5-3-5. In this way the 4th doesn't have time to go down to 1. It becomes shorter than a single 4th, similar to "whip-like", directly down to 3

This is really interesting! Never heard this before, but it makes sense since no other tones falls from the upper end (5) anyway, so there is no confusion.

 

I have been doing 5-1-5 most of the time and my teacher did not seem unsatisfied. Hmmm, I have to ask her at some point...

 

17 minutes ago, realmayo said:

Huge risk here is that people will hear your 2nd tone as an exaggerated 3rd tone. It took me a lot of remedial work to stop my 2nd tones sounding like 3rd tones and it was because I was starting the 2nd tone too low,

 

I have read that many times on this forum, but never understood it. If I am not mistaken people say the 3rd tone as a low tone or half tone 3rd tone (2-1) without the rising part anyway (unless the third tone is at the end) (I think there are videos by Yoyo Chinese , John Pasden, Mandarin Blueprint and many others on that phenomenon). So, if I say 不同 in  不同国家 as 5-1-5, it is distinctly different than if I said tong3 [in the latter I would say 5-2(不) to 1 (同).

Could the confusion (2d tone vs 3rd tone) be due to foreigners mispronouncing the 3rd as a falling-rising tone rather than due to them saying the second tone as 1-5?

 

33 minutes ago, realmayo said:

There's some free software called Praat into which you can play a snippet of your own speech or of a recording of someone else's, and it'll show you the tone, visually. The real world is nothing like that diagram. Seeing results from Praat shouldn't make you discouraged: instead it's just a reminder to focus on what you hear native speakers saying, and try to mimic it, the same way that you shouldn't be thinking of the English q sound whenever you see q in pinyin.

 

Here's a long but fascinating thread: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/43798-accent-improvement-more-natural-sounding-tones/

And one with some - I think - quite surprising or eye-openining examples: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/52980-2nd-tone-at-the-end-of-a-sentence/

Thanks I read those a while ago and tried Praat and similar software before.

[Leslie Frank]

If you're trying to emphasize the 1st and 4th tones---say, in a classroom setting in front of a teacher, then, yeah, the 4th tone has a short clip to it, while the 1st will be a longer sound that you can sing out.
 

Everyone's heard the "mā, má, mǎ, mà" chorus, but if you wanted something different, you can think of "f*ck." (Apologies if you find the word usage offensive.)

 

"F*ck" is a natural 4th tone. You don't even have to exaggerate "f*ck" to get that 4th tone.
 

The 1st tone is usually taught to be a drawn out, high pitched tone, and thinking it in that way makes it easier to sing out that 1st tone, like the "laa" in the Do-Re-Mi song.
 

No way you would sing "f*ck" like you would "laa." (Well, MOST ppl wouldn't sing out "f*ck" in 1st tone.)

[Flickserve]

8 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

Sounds about right to me, but do you have any source for that? I googled and could not find anything....(!?) 

 

I worked it out myself.

 

I had a language partner who was inexperienced. She couldn't figure out why when I copied her, the speech sounded a bit off for a really simple sentence.

 

I can't remember exactly when I realised the increased volume is part of the quality of the 4th tone as it was so long ago now. I do remember experimenting with the 4th tone and after making those two adjustments, someone said it had got better. I think some people write about saying 4th tone more forcefully but it is easier to think of it as just being a bit louder and shorter.

 

You are right about it not mentioned much on the internet. 

 

6 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

Could the confusion (2d tone vs 3rd tone) be due to foreigners mispronouncing the 3rd as a falling-rising tone

 

I think I first read about keeping 3rd tone falling and not rising on this forum. After trying it out, there was some improvement. I have to make a conscious effort to keep it low as I have a natural tendency to let it rise. The conscious effort of remembering to keep it low also makes me start it higher. 

[EnergyReaper]

7 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

Could the confusion (2d tone vs 3rd tone) be due to foreigners mispronouncing the 3rd as a falling-rising tone rather than due to them saying the second tone as 1-5?

The key point is the starting pitch of each tone. We already know 2nd is "35", and 3rd is "214", as the picture you posted above shows.

If I hear people speaking 不同 like bùtǒng, it's because they start 同 from the 2 pitch rather than the 3 pitch. It's as if you want to sing a "Mi" to me, but you actually sing a "Re", no matter whether you sing it loudly. So at first, you need to do many single tone practices to let your vocal cords remember the right starting pitch of each tone.

[suMMit]

Where I'm a bit confused at the moment is two fourth tones. For example, when I hear 

重要

 

PY zhòngyào 

 

I swear most of the time I hear zhong4yao (Yao as neutral). 

 

My teacher corrected me the other day on

教授

 

PY jiàoshòu

 

That I wasn't pronouncing shòu as a fourth tone. 

 

 

[Guest realmayo]

3 hours ago, suMMit said:

I swear most of the time I hear zhong4yao (Yao as neutral). 

 

I wonder whether you're hearing the yao as neutral, or simply as less-stressed than the zhong. Previously on these forums we've found lots of examples of syllables - typically second syllables in a two-syllable word - which you'd swear were getting a proper tone, but listening to the syllable in isolation, do not seem to be getting a tone.

 

There's a whole heap of complicated stuff out there about stress. Part of that is the obvious stuff about two-character words where the first character is stressed fully and the second character is not stressed (e.g. māma). In that case, we're taught that the second, unstressed character is in neutral tone.

 

But there's also, if I understand it right, and maybe this varies from linguist to linguist (and I'm no linguist) the idea of full stress and extra-heavy stress. Both would get normal tonal treatment.

 

One example I saw would be:

爸爸 bàba HEAVY + LIGHT
计划 jìhuà HEAVY + HEAVY (more stress on first syllable)
宿舍 sùshè HEAVY + HEAVY (more stress on second syllable)

 

But these stresses can very depending on context, both in terms of the communicating meaning, and in terms of where the word is within a sentence.

 

Perhaps the key point is that Chinese speakers of course do not speak like robots with equal stress on each syllable - stress varies, and will always "sound right" even though the speaker isn't aware of applying any particular stress-rule to what they're saying.

 

I presume the best way to speak more naturally as a foreign language learner is to keep paying attention to - and mimicing - native speech (rather than try to work out complicated rules for stress).

 

Lots on this all here: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=35300

Edited March 5, 2021 at 01:33 PM by realmayo
went and checked the text

[889]

In a double-fourth word like 重要, the second fourth tone both starts and ends a bit lower than the first; it's also a shade lighter. You'll sound weird if you make both fourth tones in the pair identical.

[Guest realmayo]

And: from the comments on that webpage, I thought this was very interesting:

 

Characters: 昨天张老师请我们去他家吃饭。

Pinyin:  Zuótian Zhāng lǎoshī qǐng wǒmen qù tā jiā chīfàn.

 

PTR: Zuótiān, zhāng-lao³shī, qǐng-women-qu⁴ ta¹-jiā chī-fàn.

 

Tones are indicated by both diacritics and superscript numbers; the diacritics are for full tones, and the numbers are for weakened tones ("weakened tone ictus-bearing syllables", the paper says). Thus, 'lao³shī' would appear to indicate that both syllables do bear tones, but the second syllable is more prominent.