Audio file: please criticise my pronunciation

[fenlan]

This file is from the book by Wu Haomin that I mentioned earlier. It is a zipped JPG, and shows how to pronounce tones in combination.

[fenlan]

These files are from another book showing tones in combination, as shown by an anlysis of speech by some kind of machne.

[nipponman]

Wo2 ye3 xiang2 mai3 bi3 ji4 ber3. << This sounds awkward, and probably there are people who say it this way in a specific situation, but I would think that if "want" is pronounced as the second tone, then it should follow immediately "I".

Wo2 xiang2 mai3 bi3 ji4 ber3.

Wo2 ye2 xiang2 mai3 bi3ji4ben3 << This is incorrect, I tried to say this several times and I think it is very awkward, I have never heard this before.

There is obviously a lot to learn about pronounciation. I didn't know emphasis could be placed on words in this way. Are there any other explanations as to why emphasis is placed like this?

nipponman

P.s. I was gonna put my spoken version down but, I can't compress the file enough!

[Dennis]

发音篇

7.变调

我买 Wo3 mai3 change to Wo2 mai3

我也想买 Wo3 ye3 xiang3 mai3 change to Wo2 ye1 xiang2 mai3

我也想买笔记本 Wo3 ye3 xiang3 mai3 bi3ji4ben3 change to Wo2 ye1 xiang3 mai2 bi3ji4ben3

The sounds of Chinese

7. Changes of tone.

Here wo3 mai3 illustrates the rise in tone of the first of two third tone words said together{N.B.these changes are not marked in our text}.

When three or four third tone words occur in sequence, all but the last change to the rising contour of the second tone, except that normally unstressed words may change to first tone.

In Wo3 ye3 xiang3 mai3, ye3 is one of those unstressed syllables.

In longer sequences of third tones, the sequence may be broken according to natural sense-grouping: in Wo3 ye3 xiang3 mai3 bi3ji4ben3, the break occurs between wo3 ye3 xiang3: I also intend and mai3 bi3ji4ben3 to buy a notebook.

[fenlan]

Nipponman, try recording not at CD quality, but at radio quality, by altering the quality preferences. Try Step Recorder, which you can get online.

[fenlan]

Dennis you haven't looked at the 3 pages I scanned in for you...

[fenlan]

Can Chinese speakers eg Shibo, gato or others, post an audio file of woyexiangmaibijiben, first spoken slowly then at normal speed?

[Dennis]

I have looked at those pages.

I just wanted to let you know what the source book says about tone changes.

What I do not want is to start tone discussion again

I cannot scan the linguaphone pages like your pages

By the way thanks for those pages

[HSC]

Wow!

I just read this entire thread for the first time and am almost afraid to put my two cents in. Even though English is not a tonal language, boy do I hear some mean tones flying back and forth LOL.

I think that when you study from a book, there is only so much that the author can do to try to guide you. I think this is especially true when trying to learn tones. I believe that you will never learn tones properly if you rely on print from a book. Also, some words have a certain tone in Beijing and a different one in Taiwan, for example. So you probably want to learn the lingo depending on where you are or plan to be. When I was learning some German a long time ago and was getting discouraged at trying to understand the details of everything, at some point my German friend told me that for some things you simply need to get the sense of it, the Gefühl.

The part about the unstressed word getting a first tone when you have three third tones is something that I could never think about while speaking. I'd rather follow what a native speaker says sounds right and go from there. You may think you need to generalize the why's and how's of everything in order to make learning easier, but you'd be surprised at how many things your brain can remember without rules. My point is, let the books be your guide when you have nothing else, but ultimately you want to be able to speak Chinese to Chinese people and no two people will have the same opinion on everything, Moreover, language is an ever-evolving thing and books from 20 years ago might not still be correct on some things such as pronunciation or even word usage.

When I speak Spanish, people always tell me I sound Cuban (except the Cubans, of course); that's because I lived in Miami and mimiced the way I heard things. I didn't care what the rules were; I just wanted to be able to communicate with others in Spanish and since most Spanish speakers in Miami tend to be Cuban, that's what I picked up. Now, I do understand that the lingua-franca is the Beijing speech and this is what is considered to be the educated way of speaking, but if I were going to live in, say, Shanghai, I would learn from the locals.

The best comment on this thread was the "that is who I am" post (sorry, I don't know exactly who said that because the thread is so long and that's like on page 6, so I can't see it while I'm composing) because each person is truly defined by the circumstances around him/her. I like to use Beijing speech as a guide when I am studying, but when I'm with my Taiwanese friends, I go by what they say. Eventually, when you know enough of the language, you will sort things out in your mind and know what to say where. I do it with English and French all the time. When I'm in the US, I say "Canadian bacon" but in Canada I say "back bacon". Canadian french uses variations of religious words to swear while French from France uses sex-based swearing like English. (Gee, I can't believe that was the best example I could think of )

Well, I think I'm losing my train of though now, so I'll stop here and let this be food for thought.

[fenlan]

Quest, did you see the scanned picture of a page from professor Wu Haomin's book? Actually my Chinese teacher was a former pupil of Wu Haomin's, but she told me that the theory of 3-3-3 becoming 2-1-3 was not correct. The only reason why the book contains the theory is this: foreigners asked to produce 2-1-3 probably do not do it correctly anyway, and it is possible that, asked to produce 2-1-3, they produce something else that is accidentally actually quite close to the correct pronunciation of 3 third tones together? This is a rather murky subject area, as the other scanned picture from another book showed that electrical analysis of sound waves of native speakers showed that the actual realisation of 3-3-3 in eg zhan3lan3guan3 was that the middle tone was a connecting tone between zhan2 and guan3, and so was actually a briefly falling tone, about 4-3 in tonal value. So the two books conflict. Unless, as I said, when foreigners are asked to produce zhan35lan55guan214, they actually come up with zhan35lan43guan214, because their tones are not clipped enough anyhow, thus incidentally getting close to the right result?

[roddy]

Cool thread

I'm going to be the boring admin bloke and suggest starting new threads for different peoples' audio files / in-depth discussion of tones, as it'll keep things a lot more managable. Up to you though, if you want to stick everything in one massive thread then go ahead - I know it's easier, I just think the end results are more confused.

I've also sent a brief note out extolling the virtues of friendliness and helpfulness to those I thought needed it.

Roddy

[HSC]

... Actually my Chinese teacher was a former pupil of Wu Haomin's, but she told me that the theory of 3-3-3 becoming 2-1-3 was not correct. The only reason why the book contains the theory is this: foreigners asked to produce 2-1-3 probably do not do it correctly anyway, and it is possible that, asked to produce 2-1-3, they produce something else that is accidentally actually quite close to the correct pronunciation of 3 third tones together?

I think that if you do not think too much about it and say the three third tones in succession at a natural pace, you can't help but transform the first two third tones. I think this happens naturally and is the reason that it exists in the first place.

I used to try to make all the liasons in French until I realized native speakers here (Canada) did not always do it. I couldn't figure out why, nor how they decided which ones to do the liason on. So, I just decided to not really try to do it and let it come when it has to. So, "Je suis ici" comes out more like "Je sui ici" and not like "Je sui s-ici". The reason liasons occur has to do with the ability to combine and be able to pronounce words in succession and happens pretty much automatically out of necessity.

A native speaker, though s/he may know the tones of each word, would doubtfully analyze each word and try to perform a tone sandhi purposefully. Now, you may be thinking that a native speaker would just go by if it sounded right, so a word like ma3tong3 would simply sound right if pronounced closer to ma2tong3, and therefore the native speaker would not really have to think about it. But what about the example given previously: wo3 ye3 xiang3 mai3 bi3ji4ben3? This is not a predefined word, but a combination of many words that happen to have many third tones and is one possible combination of many such circumstances. So, I can't imagine that the whole sentence can simply "sound right" the same way for all native speakers and thus why we've probably had to debate it so much. I think in this case, the tones will change depending on how fast it is said, and where the speaker decides to pause while saying it. (I won't give examples since that's been done a lot already in the past).

What do you all think?

[shibo77]

Well roddy suggested starting a new thread, but I suppose doing the exact opposite wouldn't trouble.

I HAVE HEARD:

我也想买笔记本。

wo3 ye3 xiang3 mai3 bi3 ji4 ben3

我也想买笔记本。

wo2 ye3 xiang3 mai3 bi3 ji4 ben3.

我爷想买笔记本。

wo3 ye2 xiang3 mai3 bi3 ji4 ben3.

我爷想买笔记本。

wo2 ye2 xiang3 mai3 bi3 ji4 ben3.

I HAVEN'T HEARD:

我也翔买笔记本。

wo2 ye3 xiang2 mai3 bi3 ji4 ben3.

我爷翔买笔记本。

wo2 ye2 xiang2 mai3 bi3ji4ben3

我耶想埋笔记本。

wo2 ye1 xiang3 mai2 bi3ji4ben3.

我爷香买壁基本。

wo2 ye2 xiang1 mai3 bi4 ji1 ben3.

-Shìbó

[fenlan]

That's great. I'm going to listen tonight.

[in_lab]

Shibo, thanks for recording the sentence. I know you were speaking slowly to make things clear, but they all sound forced. Why not just say it naturally, and don't worry about getting it right?

I think HSC is right. The tone combination depends on speed, emphasis, and where the speaker happens to pause. But that doesn't mean that all combinations are equally natural.

[Dennis]

what is 壁基本

[HSC]

Hi Dennis,

what is 壁基本

I don't know what bìjīběn means, but I think you heard 笔记本 (bǐjìběn) which is a notebook. If you were listening to the recordings on this thread, you suffered a tone change.

Out of curiosity, which IME do you use to input Chinese? When I use the MS Pinyin IME and type bi ji ben, it gives me the correct word (笔记本) based on the combination.

[chenpv]

Usually，if a word is made up of two characters both with the third tone, the first character changes to second tone when read, especially in a quick manner. Some people may not realize this when speaking pretty fast and casually, so once read that character by character slowly, we chinese may find it really awkward to sound the first character in the second tune. As for '我也想买笔记本', first we should separate the different words as '我也 想买 笔记本'，so when you reading really fast, 我 and 想 should change their tones to wo2 xiang2 in terms of the rules. However this rule applies to statement without any emphasis in the meaning. if you want to stress something like '我' （I）or '想'（want to），you have to follow the original tunes because there are subliminal short pauses in front of the next characters, which in the end breaks the continuity of the speaking.

thats why i gave the answer as:

wo3(2)ye3 xiang3(2)mai3 bi3ji4ben3.

[carlo]

Mind if I join in? I've taped this before going to work this morning, hope the attachment isn't too large. As my native language is Italian, I probably have different pronunciation issues than the other guys. If Al Capone spoke Chinese, this is what he would have sounded like.

I think this is fun btw, can we make it into a regular feature on this forum? I can help you perfect your Mafia accent for free.

[fenlan]

I think Roddy wants to put different people's audios in different threads to make sure they are noticed separately. Roddy are you going to move this?