How could I get better at tones?

[atitarev]

1. With the exception of the CCTV news broadcasters, I find that when natives speak quickly, most tones seem to disappear (this could also be due to the fact, however, that my ears aren't fully use to them yet?)

I think the latter is more likely to be true. I have the same impression taht tones are not pronounced when spoken quickly. They are! Try listening on the slow speed to a recording - I had a pinyinised (with tone marks) transcript and I could match the tones pronounced exactly to the tones in the text using a pen . There are, of course, tone sandhis and neutral tones to remember. When speaking naturally, tones are not highlighted, which makes it a little bit harder for a foreign learner but they are pronounced, anyway.

Not so sure about songs, though.

[Kong Junrui]

Oh man!

More than a year after I posted this I returned to these forums and found this topic again. I just thought I'd let you guys know that I'm indeed better at tones and Chinese in general now. I take the time to slow down my speech to get the tones in, and I sure think it works.

大家多谢！

[simonf]

I've come up with a mnemonic that might be useful to someone else.

Associate tones with world regions. For me, 1 is Norhern Europe, 2 is East Asia, 3 is Mediterranean+Middle East, 4 is America. Then feel free to create further associations staying within the geographical bounds.

[jeffofarabia]

Just found this and think it is pretty nice for basic tone practice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/

[Shi Tong]

One note.

This is how I remembered my tones- I would recite the sounds to myself every step I took. I would hum in my head "mm1, mm2, mm3, mm4".

[Kev]

1. You MUST practice minimal pairs with a good native speaker (sorry to ppl with southern accents, but I avoided you when learning). A "minimal pair" is two things which sound the same to a non-native speaker, but the two are actually different and convey different meanings. The aim is first to hear the difference, then reproduce the difference. Here's how a typical session works. The teacher shows the learner a card or piece of paper with the two written on it. The teacher says them at random and the student points to which one they hear. AFTER the student can hear the difference correctly, the student says them at random and the teacher has to point to what they hear. After the teacher can hear correctly what the student is trying to say, then you've probably made a good start. It takes patience and, if necessary the knowledge of how to place lips and tongue to make sounds which aren't usually made in your language. The minimal pair can also be a sentence which differs only slightly.

2. Listening/speaking practice. And remember, practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. So ten minutes spent working hard on one sentence again and again is much better than twenty minutes on 40 sentences. Here's how a good session goes. Listen to the item a few times. Your software must allow you to slow it down if you need to. If it's a sentence, you should break it up into smaller pieces and listen again and again. Then and only then, check the written copy to see you got it right. NOW it's time for you to speak. Listen once more then speak the item. Listen again to see if you think it sounds right (once you are a little advanced and you've mastered minimal pairs for the items in the sentence, this should be ok to do without the teacher). Listen and repeat the item again. If it's a sentence you might want to start with just the first few words. Repeat these, and each time through add the next word or phrase. Listen/speak. Listen/speak. Let me say again, ten minutes on one sentence can actually be very valuable. You can't run until you can walk.

Is it time for a PIN on Minimal Pairs? This technique has been THE most valuable tool in my learning to speak Chinese.

[sparrow]

Pure Tone Practice

I just made this spreadsheet.

 

It randomizes all the tones and syllables, so you can get a new practice set every time you modify the spreadsheet. Print it out and you'll have tons of tones to practice. Note, because the words are randomized, they are not real words. It's just tone practice.

 

There's also a static version on the second page of the spreadsheet in case you want to practice the same ones over and over without having to print.

 

 

I recommend getting a Chinese friend or teacher to read the sheet aloud to you while you record it on your cellphone or computer. Ask them to leave a small pause after each "word" so you have time to repeat what they say when you play back the recording.

 

I figure this kind of practice is analogous to a soccer player who weight lifts and does sprint work to improve overall strength, power, and endurance.

 

Contextual Tone Practice

Go through your textbook dialogues. Over every character, mark the tone. Practice reading the dialogues with the correct tones. Follow along with a recording if your book comes with it, or ask a friend or teacher to help you make the recordings.

 

This is analogous to a soccer player drilling soccer maneuvers that will actually be used during the game.

[sparrow]

@Kev: I think there should be a pin for that. You can send the mods a PM about it. Let me know and I will also send them a PM. It's really interesting information that will be really helpful for me in the future in terms of other languages, and maybe even Chinese still.

[Mr John]

Epic thread,

 

I was just wondering if anyone else has tryed using the pronunciation and tone stuff put out by All Set Learning. Seems like it ticks a lot of boxes as far as this discussion is concerned. And no, I don't work for them... I wish!

 

Now I've just got to sort out these pesky pronunciation problems. I don't know about you guys but my "qu" is probably the worst of my collection of problems, it sounds kind of like the end of a sneeze at the moment...

 

Nothing worse than thinking you have finally nailed a sound only to discover you still sound like token foreigner.

[Manuel]

Someone said on this thread that when native speakers speak fast some tones seem to "disappear", and then someone replied saying that they don't.

 

My impression is that they get attenuated. This is a phenomenon of all languages, I can't remember the technical word for it but it refers to phonetic tolerances built into every language, that allow speakers to deviate a certain amount from the prescribed "standard" pronunciation and still be understood. As long as the deviation falls within the "intelligible range", speakers are able to exaggerate or even deliberately distort certain pronunciations (e.g. in comedy) and still be able to convey their message

 

In normal speech, such deviations are involuntary and occur simply to minimize the amount of work our speech organs do when we speak. Put another way, speakers are lazy, and if they find an easier way to pronounce a word whilst still being understood, the natural tendency is towards the articulation that requires the least possible amount of effort. This is common in fast speech, owing to the fundamental laws of physics which tell as that moving objects faster takes more energy (the tongue in this case) so when we speak fast, speed being the fixed variable, the natural result is to reduce the distance travelled, thus keeping the energy consumption about the same, which results in slight yet acceptable variations of the original "standard" pronunciation. Native speakers know how far they can push this laziness before communication breaks down, and they instantly know when something they've said is unlikely to be understood (and repeat it). You've probably met people (perhaps from a different part of your country) who speak your mother tongue but you have trouble understanding, that's because their range and your range don't match, what your brain expects is not what they are giving you. Another classic example is speaking while brushing your teeth, when you say something, you hear yourself and you know it was not clear enough. What you've just said is a corrupted version of the intended message that is impossible to decode.

 

The same happens with tones in Mandarin: native speakers also get lazy, and glide over tones often organically interpolating a tone between two other adjacent tones like it's the most natural thing in the world. They can do this because they are so familiar with the entirety of their language that they know when and how much they are allowed to get "creative" whilst still remaining intelligible. Context also dictates the amount of freedom can afford. What tends to happen in Chinese is that the pitch range between the highest high (e.g. 1st tone) and the lowest low (e.g. the end of a 4th tone) gets squashed when speaking fast. When they want to emphasize parts of a sentence, they simply enlarge the range to increase the contrast between high and low pitch (more contrast = more emphasis). In English and many other languages, by contrast, high pitch is used to emphasize.

 

Not only tones are affected though, for example, you'll notice Chinese people often say "mǎ hàng" instead of "mǎ shàng" (马上) or "duō -r- qián" instead of "duō shao qián", etc. A bit like "gonna" vs "going to" in English.

 

In reply to the original question, my advice is to initially make a conscious to emphasize the pitch range, that is, increase the distance between the highest high and the lowest low, at least when practising at home. Learn the words by their sound, hear them in your head before you utter them. Learn to not rely on the visual confirmation of the tone marks, but on the actual sound of the words, in the same way you remember a melody. Emphasizing the difference between high and low pitch will make the "tune" or "melody" easier to remember. Chinese kids do this in schools. The "laziness" and reduction in pitch range will come to you naturally. The important thing is that you learn words by their sound not by their written look. If you can do that, you won't think of tones as being an "add-on", rather, it will become an integral part of the sound which you will view as a unit. That's how Chinese native speakers go about it, subconsciously.

 

There are some romanization methods (alternatives to pinyin) that don't use tone marks to denote tone. I don't think anybody uses as pinyin seems to be the universally accepted method, at least in mainland China. I did once look into such methods and I am convinced they could make it easier to learn tones, because each tone is written using different letters so they look different enough to be memorable, unlike tone marks which are just a tiny indistinct squiggle over a vowel. Keen students can use such methods or devise their own for their own private use (seems like pinyin is here to stay).

 

Sorry about the torrent of random thoughts. I find this topic quite fascinating. All I wanted to say is that speakers are allowed a certain degree of freedom and languages are, in practice, very organic. The key is not to speak standard, but to know where the limits are.

[Andrew78]

Hi,

 

I think Manuel just nailed it, as a non-native English speaker I guess I can bring my two cents, and I can tell you this: often, though at least in reading I might be considered a C1 or even more (I have a gap between my listening skills and my reading skills) I still got problems to make out if someone tells me "I can't" or "I can", so I rely on the context: If someone says "Sorry I can't do it" even though they don't say the "t", or they speak very fast and I don't make out any difference, I can of course understand very easily and the association in my brain is very prompt.

Or like the terms "word" and "ward", I really still don't hear almost any difference when a native says them each one on its own, or maybe I hear something very very tiny, but of course it's impossibile not to be able to distinguish between these two words in normal conversation, since the context will be always quite different. So, I never paid attention to the prononciation of these 2 "wards" since there was no actual need. Or take for instance many native English speakers that may say "ho' " (without the "t", at least for me) or all the connected speech or contracions like "dunno", since you have context, you don't really need to make out these words.

 

My chinese teacher told me to listen naturally when she speaks and try to imitate her, avoiding thinking too much about each tone when I'm speaking, otherwise it'll be a huge and not rewarding job. I noticed that if you ask a native Chinese speaker the tone of some characters, sometimes they have to think a little bit, it's not immediate, they have just imitated their parents when they learned chinese, not really knowing they were making tones.

 

And what about the fact that almost no native English speaker would ever say "I askt her", making the "t" very clear,  I guess they say something like "I ast her", since it's not easy to let the words flow well in the first case.

 

So you already know that unlike what they teach you in Chinese textbooks, Chinese people almost never say the third tone entirely, but it's more like an half third tone, and they do that for the same reasons native English speakers won't say the above mentioned sentence in the way it is supposed to be pronounced.

[Jan Finster]

This website may be helpful to some to learn to practice your perception (listening) of tone pairs:

http://www.maorma.net/

 

The downside is that it is TTS (computer voice). 

[Tomsima]

I just tried this out, but the fact that it is TTS seems to mean that its 3rd tone is pitched slightly higher than it would usually be in 3-4 and 3-2 combinations. Sounds unnatural to me and would probably just compound listening errors in the long run. If you can, it would be much better to use real recordings. An hour class face to face with a teacher doing this once a week would of course see your tone comprehension sky rocket, and you can be sure in the knowledge that you are getting 100% accurate feedback.

[Jan Finster]

59 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

I just tried this out, but the fact that it is TTS seems to mean that its 3rd tone is pitched slightly higher than it would usually be in 3-4 and 3-2 combinations

Yes, it is unnatural. I will only use it as a test every now and then. When I started 9 months ago, I got most wrong. I thought it was due to the TTS, but my Taiwanese ex-GF, of course, got all of them right (even though she did say it was somewhat hard due to TTS). So, there is room to learn ?

 

1 hour ago, Tomsima said:

An hour class face to face with a teacher doing this once a week would of course see your tone comprehension sky rocket,

I agree. But, actually I like the fact that you can use it independent of a tutor.

[MTH123]

I believe that the #1 most important thing in learning Chinese is to get an ear for tones. In my case, I’m trying to get it back, if possible. I learned the tones as a little kid. But, I lost them as an adult. The YouTube video below teaches the tones in a different-and-simpler way than they are traditionally taught. I really like the way it redefines how to think about the four tones: robot, question, lowest and highest (not 1, 2, 3 and 4). It’s much easier for me to wrap my brain around this and hear the tones.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zFTmq7FGqs

 

The YouTube video below is a variation on the same theme.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpD6rigORXc

 

The YouTube videos below are also variations on the same theme. The four tones are redefined as: may(be), what?/huh?/yes?, uh and no!/sure!/yeah! The YouTuber chose these definitions, because they are tones that English-speaking people already make and can identify.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jehNzW9uN00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuX9F5emdk0

 

Most other videos and websites did nothing for me but leave me largely in the dark. I would get a feeling of dread and wonder how long it would take for me to figure it out, if ever. The videos above have at least given me a good kick start and gotten me on my way to getting an ear for tones.

 

I use the website below to drill single-syllable tones. I now know to listen for 1) the starting pitch and 2) robot, question, lowest and highest.

 

https://www.archchinese.com/mandarin_chinese_tone_drill.html

 

“Lowest” has actually become the easiest for me to detect, because it starts with such a low pitch. The pitch is at the bottom of one’s speaking voice, lower than Westerners are used to having to speak. So, I can tell that it’s very low. That leaves anything that starts with a mid-to-low pitch as “question.” It really does sound like a question too, not just a rising pitch. It’s much easier for me to think of it as a question than a rising pitch.

 

“Robot” and “highest” both start with high pitches. Then, I listen for a flat pitch or a lowering-pitch. If I’m unsure, I think about no!/sure!/yeah! Lowering pitches tend to be shorter in duration too.

 

Literally within a day, I quickly went from randomly guessing to being confident more than half of the time. I should be consistently at 100% in the not too distant future. Then, I’ll be on to more complicated aspects of tones.

 

I hope this works for someone else too.

[MTH123]

On 4/19/2022 at 4:04 PM, MTH123 said:

https://www.archchinese.com/mandarin_chinese_tone_drill.html

 

For the woman’s voice in the tone driller above, I never got the third tone wrong, because it was always really obvious to me when she started with a very low pitch. And, I’m terrible with pitches, singing, etc. So, I thought I should try to listen to others. Below is another website that drills tones (single syllables only). It switches between a man’s voice and a woman’s voice. I would sometimes get the third tone wrong, just like the other tones. This actually makes me feel better, lol. It makes me think more about what I need to be learning, which is good.

 

https://met.github.io/chinese-tones-practice/

 

By the way, I don’t care what words are actually being said. I’m just trying to hear tones. Stated differently, learning to hear tones can be done before learning the words in these tone drillers. I believe that it’s important to develop an ear for tones as early as possible.

[suMMit]

@MTH123I also recommend tone pairs

 

 https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/Tone_pairs

[MTH123]

On 4/20/2022 at 8:22 PM, suMMit said:

@MTH123I also recommend tone pairs

 

 https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/Tone_pairs

 

suMMit, thank you!