Reductions in fast Chinese speech

[Jan Finster]

I found this video very interesting and it helps me understand fast speech better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdPZeWIxrtc&ab_channel=GraceMandarinChinese

 

[when she does the reduction for 可以, what tones is she using?] [around 3:31 min]

[黄有光]

I have noticed that rapid, colloquial Chinese speech seems to include a significant amount of atonality, or reduced/altered expression of tones, and it seems to be a totally separate phenomenon from the neutral tone.

 

For example, I've noticed phrase- and sentence-final words (and I'm not talking about emotive particles) are often pronounced with weak or no tonality (and often low in pitch).

 

I am at a loss for how to replicate what I have heard in my own speech. I feel like I am running into the same problem I have with replicating intonation in German or French -- namely that intonation tends to follow fuzzy statistical tendencies as opposed to hard, clearly defined rules. Does anyone have any insights here?

[yibeikafei]

On 7/2/2022 at 10:26 AM, Jan Finster said:

[when she does the reduction for 可以, what tones is she using?] [around 3:31 min]

 

Once I asked my girlfriend (who is a native speaker) a similar question regarding some words that she likes to "speed up" (like 然后，对了，不知道。。。) and she just stared at me, utterly confused and at loss for words   I suppose most native speakers do not necessarily analyze each and every sound they make and may even be unaware that they speak in short-cuts and abbreviations (as we all do in our native languages, and unless someone points at them, I suppose we don't realize it either) so I don't know if this is the right answer (neither of us are linguists so it's probably not) but I still want to share her answer, because I felt that it was helpful for me:

 

The speed of your speech does not alter the tones themselves. However, when you are speaking set phrases (or commonly used words) fast, you naturally de-emphasize them. When you are not emphasizing the words the range of your tones shrinks (I am attaching a visual to explain this better). So the tones do not disappear or change, they just get toned down, if it makes sense?? Perhaps, your first tone becomes a lower version of itself, while your third tone gets somehow closer to the fifth tone?

My teachers have always emphasized the importance of "the range". In theory, there is not a default "range" that works for everyone. One person's first tone may be higher (in musical sense) than the other. The important thing is that, you are consistent in "your" range, that is, your third tones are always the lowest, and your first tone is always the highest, your second tone may never climb higher than your first tone and your fourth tone may never go deeper than your third tone. My teachers thought that this was a problem for a lot of foreigners and that the inconsistency of their range was immediately obvious to a native speaker. My teachers gave us this exercise to help us find our range: Say "早安“ in the most 标准 way that you can muster, similar to how children recite poems on TV Your 早 is the lowest tone you will go for in your speech, and your 安 is the highest. Try to navigate between these limits.

 

So, I suppose as long as you have a consistent range, you can tone it down to de-emphasize phrases and speed up your speech. When people are preparing a formal speech, they speak with utmost care, emphasizing each tone, sticking closely to their 早安 guidelines, if that makes sense? But when they are casually speaking, the tones kinda get less theatrical and more casual, and they may sound like they are converging somewhere along the fifth tone, but actually, they are still there. You just created a more subtle and toned-down range. You will often hear people going back and forth between their emphasized speech and casual speech for a variety of reasons. Maybe they are angry about something so they kinda spit out the words, or maybe they want to avoid misunderstandings so they want to enunciate the word clearly. Maybe, they are telling you a word that they anticipate that might be new for you, like someone else's name. There are a lot of reasons to switch. I tried to find some examples from the video you shared:

7:50 -- she emphasizes 闭嘴 and the nature of the emphasis here is most likely emotional (frustration)

8:32 -- he emphasize 这种人 in order to indicate his dislike.

9:05 -- he emphasizes 名人 (I think with pride or just for the sake of enunciating the word more clearly)

 

Also, one last thing: the subtitles are not always accurate. I mean, they are definitely correct but sometimes they "standardize" the subtitles and omit the idiosyncrasies (or local tendencies) in native speakers' speeches. Sometimes they even add words to make the subtitles more grammatically correct than the original sentence. This happens a lot on the news (not as much in scripted TV shows) So don't get too frustrated if you don't distinctly hear each and every character that is in the subtitles. A very easy and common example: Many people say 今儿 instead of 今天 (maybe it's a Beijing dialect thing, I don't know) but the subtitles will show 今天。

 

I am sorry for the lengthy explanation but learning about the range was helpful with my spoken Chinese, so I hope it also helps other people too.

[yibeikafei]

On 7/2/2022 at 12:08 PM, 黄有光 said:

I am at a loss for how to replicate what I have heard in my own speech. I feel like I am running into the same problem I have with replicating intonation in German or French -- namely that intonation tends to follow fuzzy statistical tendencies as opposed to hard, clearly defined rules. Does anyone have any insights here?

I don't know if this makes sense but I like to visualize my tones. In my mind, my first tone is high, near my forehead or something, and my third tone is very low, all the way to my belly button? It sounds weird but I always visualize this when I'm having a hard time with my tones. When I have these physical boundaries in my mind, it somehow becomes easier to stick with the appropriate tones and not do random emphatic intonations. So when I am doing the 早安 exercise, I imagine my voice traveling from my belly to my head. I think this is a musical technique actually, because the Chinese teacher who taught me the 早安 trick was also a voice coach and a musician. I dont have any musical talents but it kinda makes sense to me...

[Jan Finster]

On 7/2/2022 at 6:47 PM, yibeikafei said:

The speed of your speech does not alter the tones themselves. However, when you are speaking set phrases (or commonly used words) fast, you naturally de-emphasize them. When you are not emphasizing the words the range of your tones shrinks (I am attaching a visual to explain this better). So the tones do not disappear or change, they just get toned down, if it makes sense?? Perhaps, your first tone becomes a lower version of itself, while your third tone gets somehow closer to the fifth tone?

 

Well, not quite. If they deemphasise a word, then the "normal" tone may not necessarily be merely toned down. It can just as well become a "neutral" tone. So, 可以 could just be 2x fifth tone, or am I missing something?

[黄有光]

On 7/2/2022 at 7:01 PM, yibeikafei said:

I don't know if this makes sense but I like to visualize my tones. In my mind, my first tone is high, near my forehead or something, and my third tone is very low, all the way to my belly button? It sounds weird but I always visualize this when I'm having a hard time with my tones. When I have these physical boundaries in my mind, it somehow becomes easier to stick with the appropriate tones and not do random emphatic intonations. So when I am doing the 早安 exercise, I imagine my voice traveling from my belly to my head. I think this is a musical technique actually, because the Chinese teacher who taught me the 早安 trick was also a voice coach and a musician. I dont have any musical talents but it kinda makes sense to me...

Sorry but I am not talking about production of basic textbook contour tones. I already have excellent skill at that. 

[yibeikafei]

On 7/2/2022 at 8:31 PM, 黄有光 said:

Sorry but I am not talking about production of basic textbook contour tones. I already have excellent skill at that. 

I don't doubt that, I was not actually talking about textbook first tone and fourth tone stuff, but I understand that perhaps my explanation sounded a bit too basic. I learnt this trick a few years into my learning and it had really helped me with consistency and flow in my speech. I have been learning Chinese for 8-9 years and I have learnt this trick pretty late and I still haven't really mastered it... I know many non-native speakers who speak Chinese fluently on a daily basis, yet they are having problems with their range (and were never taught about the importance of the range by their teachers even after years of formal Chinese education -- although I am not saying this is necessarily true for you!). Colloquial Chinese and imitating speech patterns of native speakers does not come naturally to me at all and this trick really helped me with that. It's as if I always have this physical guideline to keep me in track. I try to "feel" it when other people are speaking as well and try to take note of where exactly their sound is coming from. But I admit everyone's problem is different and I am sorry it was not helpful to you (or sounded patronizing!)

[yibeikafei]

On 7/2/2022 at 8:14 PM, Jan Finster said:

Well, not quite. If they deemphasise a word, then the "normal" tone may not necessarily be merely toned down. It can just as well become a "neutral" tone. So, 可以 could just be 2x fifth tone, or am I missing something?

I am neither an expert, nor a linguist but I am personally still hearing 2 third tones! Just faster...  Maybe because its 2 third tones, it somehow merges into a single third tone, as if there is a one syllable keyi3... Same thing with fast suoyi3. This is my layman interpretation of it

[Jan Finster]

On 7/2/2022 at 8:06 PM, yibeikafei said:

it somehow merges into a single third tone, as if there is a one syllable keyi3.

 

That sounds about right.

[anonymoose]

On 7/2/2022 at 10:08 AM, 黄有光 said:

I feel like I am running into the same problem I have with replicating intonation in German or French -- namely that intonation tends to follow fuzzy statistical tendencies as opposed to hard, clearly defined rules. Does anyone have any insights here?

 

I don't have any insights as such, but I understand what you are saying.

 

The thing about intonation in the sense that you are describing is that this depends a lot on personal habit - thus there could not possibly be clearly defined rules. The fuzzy statistical tendencies just reflect the variation between different people's speech, or between a person's speech at different times of day.

 

For example, when speaking English, some people tend to have a rising tone at the end of each sentence. To some extent, this is a regional variation, but in any case, it is not an intonation that anyone as an English learner would need or even be desirable to replicate.

 

Perhaps I lack self-awareness, but I've never considered sentence-level intonation to be an issue when I speak Chinese.

[黄有光]

My chief concern is getting as close as possible to native pronunciation as possible. My ideal would be to be indistinguishable from a native speaker on the telephone -- at least in terms of pronunciation, if not necessarily in terms of speech production.

 

What I am wondering is, if I fail to replicate the patterns of atonality that I am hearing (syllables being pronounced without apparent tone but without the rapidity associated with neutral tone syllables, or with pitch contours not typical of the dictionary tone), will I be perceived as foreign, with accented speech? Or will I be perceived simply as speaking Very Standard 普通话? Currently I fastidiously pronounce every tone. 

[Guest realmayo]

On 7/2/2022 at 7:36 PM, 黄有光 said:

Currently I fastidiously pronounce every tone. 

My guess is that it's right to do so for now, but at some point you'll have to "let go" bit by bit so you can eventually speak Chinese how most Chinese speak when they're speaking normally.

By "let go" I mean speak automatically, without thinking about it or trying to be fastidious. One way for that automatic speaking to arrive would be lots of listening and lots of conversations. Your brain will do the rest, over time. It would be nice to think there was a shortcut, but - absent any comprehensive or formulaic descriptions about how normal fast speech differs from textbook speech - I don't think there is one.

 

[malazann]

bro i was watching some beijing tv show. a popular family one. And it took me 10 mins to figure out 今儿 = 今天。 sooo many of these types of 'reductions' its crazy. But we do the same in english so I can't complain

[Publius]

On 7/5/2022 at 8:30 AM, malazann said:

it took me 10 mins to figure out 今儿 = 今天

?

Not your fault.

《新编北京方言词典》：

【前_儿个】qiánrge　〔名〕前天(由“前日家”变来)：～，密云、怀柔下了暴雨。

【昨_儿个】zuórge　〔名〕昨天(由“昨日家”变来)：我是～回来的。

【今_儿个】jīnrge　〔名〕今天(由“今日家”变来)：～别去了，明_儿再去吧！

【明_儿个】míngrge　〔名〕“明日家”的音变。意同“明_儿”，即明天。

【后_儿个】hòurge　〔名〕后天(由“后日家”变来)：天气预报说，～是好天_儿。

You can even comebine them in 有今儿没明儿. 

 

Beijingers are especially lazy when it comes to enunciation, like this and this. There's a business district in Beijing, 大栅栏, pronounced 'dà.sh.làr'. Nowhere else in the entire world is 栅栏 ever pronounced that way.

 

On 7/5/2022 at 8:30 AM, malazann said:

But we do the same in english so I can't complain

?

I won't mention how "I am going to" becomes "I'ma". But I always wanted to share this video somewhere and this place is as good as any, so here it is: https://youtu.be/WxmEQsI_epM

 

 

 

 

[malazann]

On 7/6/2022 at 12:02 AM, Publius said:

?

I won't mention how "I am going to" becomes "I'ma". But I always wanted to share this video somewhere and this place is as good as any, so here it is: https://youtu.be/WxmEQsI_epM

 

this video was one of those paradigm-shifting videos for me where the way I am going to approach learning chinese has changed dramatically. Sometimes I only understand what was said at the start of a sentence a few seconds later when I hear the full sentence, and I'd consider that I failure on my part to need further context. 

But I'm gonna try take a more holistic approach to my listening skills, and appreciate the ability to "hear" words via context. less  0.25 speed replaying perhaps (probably not)