Punctuation-based Tone Marks

[ParkeNYU]

Unfortunately, teaching my Anglophone friends to master Mandarin tones is flat-out difficult. Instead of pretending that Mandarin is tonal and English isn't, however, I use the inherent tonality of English to convey the tones of Mandarin. I stress that you must treat each syllable as its own clause in your brain so that you're not tempted to apply a set tonal pattern across the entire sentence. The best way to do this? Simple punctuation marks:

 

1 Yeah, [let's not and say we did.]

2 Yeah? [You really think so?]

3 Yeah. [You do that and let me know how it goes.]

4 Yeah! [That's a great idea.]

(the ever-changing neutral tone remains unmarked)

 

Examples:
ni? hao. ma

wo. hen? hao.

lao. shi, dao! le

[889]

I do the same with well.

 

Native English speakers know perfectly well how to convey meaning with tones. Indeed, children are masters at it.

[Wippen (inactive)]

@ParkeNYUI think your idea and examples are really good. If I was just starting now, this method would allow me to get a good intuitive grip of tones.

[Shelley]

My second and whom I consider my best Chinese teacher taught us using Really, to show that we do use tones to express meaning.

We learnt a Really to correspond with each tone, but only in the beginning to help us understand.