Critique my prononciation?

[Kijn the Relar]

So I think a good way to get a good foundation in mandarin chinese is to have people critique my pronunciation. I recorded a sample of 5 tone pairs:  

 1 + 1 , 1 + 2, 1 + 3, 1 + 4, 1 + 5    今天, 中国, 冰水, 知道, and the last one I can't find text for, but it means "really".

 

My pronunciation is not great, I cannot tell what is wrong but thats why I'm posting here.   

 

https://soundcloud.com/pianodog/mandarin-tone-pair-1 

 

 

[Publius]

The tones are accurate.

But your pronunciation of 知 zhī seems unstable. The second time you got it right.

Also your 水 shuǐ sounds a little bit funny. I think probably due to the sometimes deceptive nature of Hanyu Pinyin. What is written as ui is actually /wei/ consisting of three sounds, u the medial (韻頭), e the nucleus (韻腹), i the coda (韻尾).

Try this: 水, sh-u-ei, shuǐ.

[889]

You're way over-doing the tones. That's not natural.

 

Take the difference between "See!" and "See?" in English. No matter how light you make the inflection, the difference between "See!" and "See?" is always apparent.

 

Same in Chinese. No need to exaggerate to be understood.

 

Also, in normal conversation words, like 知道, are pronounced as a unit.

 

As well, I think it's more helpful to think of 水 as shwei than shuei, but no romanization is perfect.

 

[Kijn the Relar]

Publius, yeah I need to work with some of the vowel sounds a bit more.  889, I agree, I think I definitely seem to be over pronouncing them. I'll try to practice making them lighter but still clear. 

[Flickserve]

Why don't you do an experiment?

 

-Try to find a short sentence with each of these words.

-Have a native speaker with a good pronunciation record the sentence(s) for you.

- work hard at mimicking the recording as closely as possible 

-then try the tone pair recording again. 

[陳德聰]

There's a post your pronunciation thread. I suggest you record yourself making some small talk and post it there.