Tones mistakes of advanced speakers

[Jan Finster]

I hear time and again that even advanced foreigners make tone mistakes. Some people say even people like Da Shan make the occasional tone mistakes.

 

Is there a pattern to those mistakes? Do foreigners tend to use the wrong tones with certain words or is it random?

 

Are those advanced speakers aware of their mistakes? Would they spot the mistake if they listened to a recording of what they said? I guess, I wonder, if they are more commonly just slips of tongue or if learners just learned the tones wrong without realising it?

 

 

[Weyland]

We could find out quite easily, by using the "普通话学习" app. Which is a pronunciation improvement and test preparation app for Chinese natives. Intonation is a bit difficult to gauge as it's more about whether or not the person in question has a good understanding of which intonation corresponds to which character. Then you also have tonal shift and neutral tones.

As for me; this is my fluency chart.



I still make quite a lot of mistakes with the pronunciation of words beginning with j - q - x and ending with an - ang - iang.

[ZhangKaiRong]

I tend to distort 第一声 to 第四声 when I'm getting tired (towards the end of long meetings / conference calls).

[Shelley]

I think even speakers of their own language will make pronunciation mistakes. No one will ever be 100% correct all the time. There are also dialect differences, north and south differences, east and west differences. One country does not speak one language, they all speak their own version of it.

What some might consider a mistake is just the difference between where you grew up and some one else's home town.

[roddy]

I wonder if a more useful question is "what mistakes do natives make" - because those are the ones there's probably not a lot of point in trying to eliminate. 

[BlackMamba]

On 6/4/2020 at 12:41 PM, Weyland said:

普通话学习

where to download this app?

[Jan Finster]

3 hours ago, roddy said:

I wonder if a more useful question is "what mistakes do natives make" - because those are the ones there's probably not a lot of point in trying to eliminate. 

 

I got interested in this question, because of one of the videos I posted of the Chinese Youtuber nitpicking foreigner's Chinese (https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/59835-interesting-youtube-videos-on-china-chinese-etc/?do=findComment&comment=468638). 

She mentioned at some  point that while this particular foreign Youtuber's pronunciation and intonation are almost flawless, native Chinese speakers would still be able to tell he is a foreigner, because of his occasional tone mistakes. So, there may be "tone inconsistencies" or regional variation among native speakers that are "acceptable" and "tone mistakes" that are clearly not  typically done by natives (?)

[Flickserve]

21 minutes ago, Jan Finster said:

So, there may be "tone inconsistencies" or regional variation among native speakers that are "acceptable" and "tone mistakes" that are clearly not  typically done by natives (?)

true. One that I pick up with my inexpert ears is the first tone pitch being too low from second language learners.

[Weyland]

1 hour ago, BlackMamba said:

where to download this app?

http://app.mi.com/details?id=com.huahua.learningpth

[mungouk]

Apparently there's an iOS version as well: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/普通话学习-普通话发音水平测试软件/id1037958811

 

I have to say I'm very skeptical about any software making judgements on quality of pronunciation though...

 

@Weyland I'd be interested to know what it is about this APP that has convinced you?

 

 

 

[Weyland]

37 minutes ago, mungouk said:

Apparently there's an iOS version as well: 

Yeah. Didn't bother posting the iOS link as it's readily available as opposed to Android where it's not available on the Google Play store.
 

38 minutes ago, mungouk said:

I have to say I'm very skeptical about any software making judgements on quality of pronunciation though...

@Weyland I'd be interested to know what it is about this APP that has convinced you?

It's not perfect. But, it's the best available tool.

Maybe I should rewrite my forum post on the app. Heck, maybe even create an PDF guiding basic/intermediate Chinese learners on how to use it.

[carlo]

There is also the possibility that people might perceive certain things as mistakes *because* they already know the speaker is a foreigner. The human mind works that way. That's no excuse for bad pronunciation – but feedback isn't always 100% accurate either.

[Xiao Kui]

I'm not sure flawless tones are possible. Tones can vary regionally. In Kunming and Chengdu, the 3rd and 4th tones were often switched by locals (I'm not sure this is always the case, but definitely happens.  Likewise, in Zhengzhou, locals pronounce the 郑 in  their city's name with a 3rd tone, even though in Putonghua it's officially a 4th. Once a Henanese corrected me repeatedly on my pronunciation of 家谱。I was pronouncing 普 correctly with a 3rd tone, which she insisted was 1st tone, until another Chinese friend came to  my defense.  Even if flawless tones are attainable, they aren't necessary.  They need to be pretty close, but smooth speech is much more important, imnsho.  You can have flawless tones, but if your speed and fluency aren't good you'll just sound awkward, like a Chinese schoolkid reciting Tang poetry.

[li3wei1]

If I, as a native English speaker, pronounce 'butter' as 'bud-a', or 'did you' as 'dih-jew', etc., are these 'mistakes'?

British people consistently fail to pronounce 'r' unless it's at the beginning of a word, rendering 'sauces', 'sources', and 'saucers' indistinguishable.

Americans, on the other hand, pronounce 'Mary', 'marry', and 'merry' identically, while Brits somehow make them into three phonetically separate words.

Are any of these 'mistakes'? Or are we following rules that are not written down anywhere, that we have not conciously learned, that are slowly changing, and that make reference to geography, social class, and other factors?

 

[Dawei3]

On 6/5/2020 at 11:09 PM, Xiao Kui said:

I'm not sure flawless tones are possible. Tones can vary regionally. In Kunming and Chengdu,

Eileen from Mandarin Corner has a great exploration of various accents in Mandarin at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH213QEckeg&t=889s  Starting at ~5 min into the video, she starts to analyze accents.  Notably, I didn't hear some of the L for N pronunciation until she pointed it out.

 

I just came across her channel.  She does a wonderful job.