"Prosody" and its influence on understanding and being understood

[Moshen]

I was listening to something or other about improving one's Chinese, and the word "prosody" came up, and I immediately said to myself, what's that? and researched it.  Then a big light bulb went on in my head.

 

Prosody is, basically, the musical line of a language, the intonation, the patterns of rising and falling, emphasis, etc.  It's far broader than just tones.

 

The first thing that clicked for me on this was (and please don't accuse me of being racist here because this is a huge and real problem I have) why I have such trouble understanding service people from India speaking English on the phone when I am trying to get a technical problem solved.  You could probably turn some of these phone conversations into a comedy routine, because I have had to ask the rep to repeat himself seven or eight times and I still couldn't understand what they were saying.  One element is that they pronounce certain consonants differently than we do, but I think even more it's that their intonation is so different I can't follow the sense.  I'm sure they thought - and may even have been told - that they're speaking English correctly, and they're fluent in the sense of fast, but to me they're sometimes next to incomprehensible.

 

The second thing that clicked for me is that now I understand better why shadowing can be useful.  If you try to mimic the musical flow of a sentence and not just the sounds or pronunciation, you will be able to sound more "native" - more natural, more understandable - to native speakers of the other language.  Right?

 

The third thing that clicked for me has to do with something I once saw comedian Sid Caesar do, at a conference.  He gave a talk on creativity, and during the question and answer period, a guy stood up and began speaking Japanese to him.  Caesar answered in what sounded to me like fluent Japanese, but in fact it was totally fake Japanese.  It turns out that Caesar can do this in a host of languages he doesn't actually speak.  And, if I remember correctly, he developed this ability as a child being a busboy in a restaurant where people from all over the world would be speaking.  Obviously, he was really gifted at sound imitation.  Think of Charlie Chaplin speaking fake German in one of his movies, but far more skillful than that.  So I am wondering if trying to do this when learning another language would help the ordinary person speak the language more easily and more understandably.  I also wonder whether focusing on this factor could help anyone who is having "trouble with tones."

 

(If you've never seen Sid Caesar do this, here's a link where he does this in fake French, German, Italian and Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SqEmkwADmY.  Notice how even his gestures change...)

[Guest realmayo]

This excellent book has plenty to say on prosody

An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics

by Perry Link

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BGZI8PC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Quote

I also began to wonder if rhythmical patterns were more common in ordinary Chinese than in ordinary English. Every human language uses stress, of course, and sometimes stress patterns take on aesthetic qualities when they “just feel right”—not merely because the accents are all on the right syllables, but because of something more than that. For example, most English speakers would probably say that “bright and shiny” sounds better than “shiny and bright,” because TAH-ta-TAH-ta sounds better (has more natural balance than?) TAH-ta-ta-TAH.⁸ The phenomenon is clear in things like slogans, chants, marches, and advertising jingles. Among the latter, we should note the pretechnological forebears known as hawkers’ calls. China was once rich in hawkers’ calls, and a few survive even in the West, for example in American ballparks, where a rhythmic pattern like “GET-cha HOT-dogs!” clearly assists in the hot dog vendor’s delivery of a message. Here, I thought, the rhythm itself helps hearers to know instantly what the topic is. Rhythms in language must be universal and part of being human, yet I still felt that they seemed especially common in Chinese.

 

[Jan Finster]

On 3/3/2022 at 12:13 PM, Moshen said:

I was listening to something or other about improving one's Chinese, and the word "prosody" came up, and I immediately said to myself, what's that? and researched it.  Then a big light bulb went on in my head.

 

Prosody is, basically, the musical line of a language, the intonation, the patterns of rising and falling, emphasis, etc.  It's far broader than just tones.

 

The first thing that clicked for me on this was (and please don't accuse me of being racist here because this is a huge and real problem I have) why I have such trouble understanding service people from India speaking English on the phone when I am trying to get a technical problem solved.  You could probably turn some of these phone conversations into a comedy routine, because I have had to ask the rep to repeat himself seven or eight times and I still couldn't understand what they were saying.  One element is that they pronounce certain consonants differently than we do, but I think even more it's that their intonation is so different I can't follow the sense.  I'm sure they thought - and may even have been told - that they're speaking English correctly, and they're fluent in the sense of fast, but to me they're sometimes next to incomprehensible.

 

I am surprised you do not know this since in English it plays such an important role.

When I am in international meetings or seminars, it never fails to amaze me that it is the native English speaker, who has the hardest time understanding non-natives, even if their English is fluent and their pronunciation is very good. I am sure they understand virtually every word that was being said, but they still struggle. What puts the native English speaker off is the lack of correct sentence and word stress. Speakers of other languages (German, French, Italian, Spanish....) typically are oblivious to English sentence stress patterns and they understand other ESL speakers people just fine. (it is a bit like us foreigners, who would understand other foreigners if they say (toneless) "wo hen hao", but the Chinese native draws a blank). I guess it plays a role in Chinese as well and I therefore believe using TTS audio is not a good substitute for native recordings.

 

 

[Dawei3]

On 3/3/2022 at 6:48 AM, realmayo said:

An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics

This is a mind opening book.  Not every chapter is great, but some chapters are superb and overall the book is excellent and it gave many new insights on the language.  Just don't expect to read it quickly.  I found I needed time to digest its info.

 

An accent reduction coach I know notes that a common problem for Chinese speaking understandable English usually isn't pronunciation but intonation.  That in English, we generally emphasize just the "big" words in a sentence.  We say "a", "the", etc, but we say them with less emphasis.  In contrast, some Chinese speakers put equal emphasis on all words and this makes it harder for native English speakers to understand them.  

 

On 3/3/2022 at 6:13 AM, Moshen said:

If you try to mimic the musical flow of a sentence

This is why I think teaching approaches like Pimsleur, i.e., those that teach whole sentences, are much more effective than those that focus on word memorization.  Word memorization doesn't teach the musical flow of a sentence.  

 

 

[abcdefg]

On 3/3/2022 at 6:56 AM, Dawei3 said:

This is why I think teaching approaches like Pimsleur, i.e., those that teach whole sentences, are much more effective than those that focus on word memorization.  Word memorization doesn't teach the musical flow of a sentence.  

 

Good point! Agree.

 

On 3/3/2022 at 5:13 AM, Moshen said:

Prosody is, basically, the musical line of a language, the intonation, the patterns of rising and falling, emphasis, etc.  It's far broader than just tones.

 

Wish it received more emphasis in low-level language instruction. I used to balk at reading out loud and shadowing; thought they wasted time. Then the light bulb turned on, and I embraced them. 

 

One thing that always struck me was the announcements when waiting in line at the bank. They were not actual human voice; they were synthesized,  robotic. Even simple things like, "Customer number 107 proceed to window 3A" were puzzling if I didn't concentrate and make an effort. Some rail stations and bus stations used a similar system and were equally strange and difficult. 

[Moshen]

Quote

This is why I think teaching approaches like Pimsleur, i.e., those that teach whole sentences, are much more effective than those that focus on word memorization.  Word memorization doesn't teach the musical flow of a sentence.  

 

I agree, but Pimsleur doesn't really emphasize imitating the "musical flow of a sentence."  I went through all of Spanish Pimsleur and part of Greek Pimsleur and I didn't even get that we were supposed to get the pronunciation exactly right, let alone the prosody.  I just concentrated on trying to remember and say the right words.  Maybe they expected listeners to imitate everything, but if they even mentioned that, I totally missed it.  On the other hand, I did pick up verb tenses from their method without traditional grammar drills and labeling.  I still don't know the grammatical names of different verb tenses in Spanish but I can understand them all and maybe speak them correctly too.

[anonymoose]

On 3/3/2022 at 2:14 PM, Moshen said:

I didn't even get that we were supposed to get the pronunciation exactly right

 

It's one of the first things they say at the beginning of the course.