Tone mistakes

[bomaci]

Something I have been wondering about for a while is: do chinese people who learn mandarin as a second language in school ever make tone mistakes? Mandarin pronounciation is generally considered very hard to learn for speakers of european languages, but what is the case for speakers of other chinese languages/dialects? Would be interesting to hear how easy/difficult it is to learn mandarin for a speaker of Shanghainese, Cantonese or other chinese languages/dialects. For instance as I have understood it Shanghainese has only two tones. Does this make mandarin tones harder to aquire for Shanghainese people than for instance for people speaking Cantonese natively, which has more tones? Please understand that I'm not trying to critisize the pronounciation of non native chinese mandarin speakers. I'm just genuinely interested in how mandarin is taught as a second language in China. My experience is that all chinese people speak with perfect tones, regardless of whether they speak Mandarin natively or if they learnt it in school. So how do you study pronounciation in chinese schools? Do you learn the tones explicitly our do you just pick them up by exposure?

[necroflux]

I can only speak to a single example, but I've talked over Skype with a Cantonese woman who was trying to help me with my Mandarin, and she was missing tones left and right (maybe even worse than Ken's from Chinesepod.com lol). It may be that she just didn't do a good job of memorizing the tones; I doubt it has to do with recognition issues since you'd think coming from a native tonal language would give you that ability universally. I'd say it's likely they find it easier learning Mandarin tones than an English-speaking learner might.

[Quest]

If the dialect speaker is educated in China since childhood, tones are probably not much of a problem. Fluency is also not a problem. The more common problems are mispronunciations of z c s/zh ch sh, and n/ng depending on region (e.g. Jenny on Chinesepod has n/ng problem due to her Shanghainese background), but then who cares? Beijingers might, who else?

I've talked over Skype with a Cantonese woman who was trying to help me with my Mandarin, and she was missing tones left and right

Where is she from? Did she learn Mandarin as a kid in China, or as an adult in Hong Kong, Macau, elsewhere?

[necroflux]

I'm not sure when she learned Mandarin, I haven't asked. She's actually at a lower-intermediate level in Mandarin at best, I actually think I could be teaching her Mandarin (which is why I've only talked to her once). So again I'm sure her tone issues were due to just a lack of knowledge rather than ability to recognize the tones.

[Ferno]

i have heard that even native speakers make some tone mistakes (I think it has to do more with tone shifts in certain characters) and of course often mistakes aren't mistakes per se - the tones are just ignored or distorted.

[BFC_Peter]

I would have thought that they would make fewer tone mistakes are they are used to the fact that when you learn a new word you have to learn the sound and the tone whereas speakers of european languages are more used to just learning the sound/spelling of the word and have to make an extra effort to learn the tone.

While I know that Chinese people are taught the different tones early on in their learning I don't think they actually register which tone a particular word is when they learn it, the same that I do - I was recently quized by some Chinese people about which tones the characters in their names were and I knew the tones better than they did! - with one person (university educated in languages) not even knowing which tone part of her own name was???

[Gestalt]

she was missing tones left and right (maybe even worse than Ken's from Chinesepod.com lol)

I'm not always sure about Ken's English tones either

[hakkaboy]

If the dialect speaker is educated in China since childhood, tones are probably not much of a problem.

Well, Quest, try coming to Kunming! Kunmingers use the following tones:

..............Mandarin................Kunming

Tone 1...55...........................44

Tone 2...35...........................31

Tone 3...214.........................53

Tone 4...51...........................212

The truthful answer to the question is that outside of Beijing few Chinese have perfect tones.

[Ferno]

wow hakkaboy that's strange

so basically they have 3 types of falling tones (because the 212 will turn into a 21 in regular speech) and no rising tone

[Lu]

Learning to speak with tones must be easier for dialect speakers, as they already speak with tones. But learning to use the right tones for every word is not much easier for them than for us, I think. They have to really learn it, in school.

[carlo]

One advantage of being a dialect speaker must be that there are ways to 'translate' from a tone in your dialect to a tone in putonghua. Eg, most low falling tones in Cantonese become Mandarin 2nd tones, and so on. So even if you make mistakes, your mistakes will be more 'regular' than those of someone who doesn't have that kind of background. Another obvious advantage is that if you've grown up in China you'll have been passively exposed to putonghua all your life.

And there are tones that not even Beijingers get right, like the 室 of 办公室.

[HashiriKata]

And there are tones that not even Beijingers get right, like the 室 of 办公室.

This is interesting. What do you mean? I've always thought that 室 is 4th tone (and at a push, neutralized in that combination). Is this not right?

[Quest]

Well, Quest, try coming to Kunming! Kunmingers use the following tones:

They speak a dialect of Mandarin....

[wushijiao]

So how do you study pronounciation in chinese schools? Do you learn the tones explicitly our do you just pick them up by exposure?

I think all teachers, in theory, should teach using standard Putonghua in the PRC. Teachers explicitly teach the tones by pointing to a character on the board, and then saying the character, with the whole class repeating in unison (correct me if wrong).

As far as Henanhua, there are some variations in vocabulary and pronunciation, but the main difference is the flatness of the tones, or the use of "wrong" tones in relation to Putonghua. Other than that, Henanhua is basically Putonghua. Also, to put it frankly, Henan is fairly poor, and thus in other parts of China, people attach many negative stereotypes to Henan, Henaners, and thus Henanhua.

In order to avoid regional discrimination, Henaners would seemingly have quite a bit of motivation to speak "correctly". And yet, the fact that many Henaners can't seem to speak tonally corect when they come to other cities, like Beijing, seems to point to the fact that once a person can't hear or speak the tones correctly past puberty, it's not all that easy to change.

[Mugi]

Chinese non-native Mandarin speakers definitely make mistakes with their tones.

There are probably several factors that affect the nature and degree of those mistakes: native language/dialect (how far removed it is from Mandarin); how much formal instruction the speaker has had in Mandarin and from what age; the language environment the speaker lives in, etc.

But learning to use the right tones for every word is not much easier for them than for us, I think. They have to really learn it, in school.

Not so. Most characters share the same tonal group across all "dialects" - thus a 1st tone character in Mandarin (i.e. a 阴平/陰平 character) will be read in the first tone (as a 阴平 character) in other dialects also. (That doesn't mean that all first tones share the same tone contour however.)

For example, the characters 三, 高 and 天 are all 阴平 characters - they are read as 1st tone characters regardless of whether they are being read in Putonghua, Cantonese, Taiwanese or Hakka, etc. 好, 走 and 比 are all 阴上 characters and share the same tone contours within their respective dialects: in Putonghua they are classified as 3rd tone (tone contour = 214), in Cantonese as 2nd tone (35), in Taiwanese 2nd tone also, but with a tone contour of 51, etc.

When learning another "dialect", it doesn't take long for people to realize, either consciously or subconsciously, that most characters that are read with "tone contour A" in "dialect A" are read with "tone contour Z" in "dialect B". E.g. 1st tone (阴平) characters in standard Cantonese (with a tone contour of 55 or 53) are read as 1st tone in Putonghua (with a tone contour of 55). 2nd tone (阴上) characters in Cantonese (tone contour = 35) are read as 3rd tone in Putonghua (tone contour = 214).

A problem arises when you get the odd character that for historical reasons is grouped differently among dialects. For instance, 马/馬 is classified as a 上 character in Putonghua so is read in the 3rd tone, but is classified as 阴平 character in most Hakka dialects, meaning that when Hakka speakers want to say 马 in Putonghua they pronounce it in the 1st tone unless they have specifically learnt otherwise.

Another larger problem is characters that are classified as 入声/聲 or entering tone characters (characters typically ending with -t, -p, -k or a glottal stop) in southern "dialects". The rules for their distribution in Mandarin, which has lost the entering tone, are very complex, making it almost impossible to predict what tone any given 入声 character will become. A common joke told among Cantonese students is the guy who wanted to ask a female classmate in Mandarin if he could borrow her pen (笔/筆 bi3), but ended up saying bi1 (屄) instead. In Cantonese 笔 (bat7) is a 入声 character.

[Ferno]

Mugi: Chinese never learn to write in their own dialects and then convert everything to Mandarin, when they learn how to write in school they learn how to write in Standard Mandarin Chinese... there isn't any interaction between their "home speech" and written Mandarin.

and there's no system to properly write Taiwanese, etc... in Chinese characters anyway. The vocabulary doesn't match.

hmm but i did some messing around with a dictionary and it seems that Mandarin 4th tone characters usually have 4th and 6th pronounciations in Cantonese... is this correct?

[carlo]

I've always thought that 室 is 4th tone (and at a push, neutralized in that combination). Is this not right?

4th tone in putonghua, but you'll often hear a third tone (AFAIK, a non-standard Beijing colloquial pronunciation). There are a few other instances where putonghua and Beijinghua character readings don't match exactly (even though the tone contours are the same: a first tone is 55, etc). On the other hand I don't think I've ever heard it neutralized.

Mandarin 4th tone characters usually have 4th and 6th pronounciations in Cantonese

I think it should be 3 and 6 (去声).

[Mugi]

Mugi: Chinese never learn to write in their own dialects and then convert everything to Mandarin, when they learn how to write in school they learn how to write in Standard Mandarin Chinese

Ferno: For the most part you're right, although many Cantonese, both in HK and Guangdong (up to middle school, at least this was the case 10 years ago), do in fact learn to write in dialect, even if it is in a somewhat literary style. Many older educated Holo Taiwanese can write in Taiwanese. There are also a number of schools in Taiwan now that have begun teaching children in Taiwanese and Hakka again.

But most of this is beside the point - you don't have to be able to write Chinese characters to make the connection between ngo5 in Cantonese, goa2 in Taiwanese and wo3 in Mandarin. In fact you can be perfectly illiterate and still know that Zung1gwok3, Tiong1kok4 and Zhong1guo2 are all the same word.

I'm not suggesting they "convert everything" - I'm saying they make the connection between the the pronunciation of a given common word/character in their own dialect and Mandarin (or any other dialect) and then use that information, either consciously or subconsciously, to extrapolate when they want to pronounce an unfamiliar word/character in the new dialect. Try asking any of your friends who speak more than one dialect.

and there's no system to properly write Taiwanese, etc... in Chinese characters anyway

Actually, you can write Taiwanese, Cantonese, Hakka, etc in Chinese characters. The only difference (compared with Mandarin) is that sometimes there aren't standardized ways of writing certain words. Sometimes it's because the words have survived in the vernacular since ancient times and people have forgotten how to write them, sometimes it's because the words are of non-Chinese derivation. But then the same can be said of Mandarin - go back a hundred years and written Mandarin wasn't very standardized either. There are many ways around this problem, but the most common are to either borrow characters with the same or similar pronunciation, or use a character that shares the same meaning and attribute the dialect pronunciation to it.

This said, with the exception of standard Cantonese, there isn't much of a surviving tradition of writing in dialect (although going back one or two centuries you can find quite a few examples; and more recently, writers like Lu Xun littered their works with dialect words).

The vocabulary doesn't match

Yeah, a lot of the vocab doesn't match, but by far the greater portion does. And it's this greater portion that allows native Taiwanese speakers to make the necessary connections.

[Ferno]

Yeah, a lot of the vocab doesn't match, but by far the greater portion does. And it's this greater portion that allows native Taiwanese speakers to make the necessary connections.

http://pinyin.info/readings/mair/taiwanese.html

nope. I'd post some relevant quotes but I'm not sure if I can spam up the thread with large blocks of text if it's not really on-topic

There are many ways around this problem' date=' [b']but the most common are to either borrow characters with the same or similar pronunciation[/b], or use a character that shares the same meaning and attribute the dialect pronunciation to it.

Everytime i hear about using a bunch of homophone sound-alike characters to write down a dialect, i wonder why they don't just use an alphabet insead of using characters just for the sake of using characters. But we all know that won't happen in a million years

But most of this is beside the point - you don't have to be able to write Chinese characters to make the connection between ngo5 in Cantonese, goa2 in Taiwanese and wo3 in Mandarin. In fact you can be perfectly illiterate and still know that Zung1gwok3, Tiong1kok4 and Zhong1guo2 are all the same word.

really? But you have no idea if the building-block morphemes used to make a word in one dialect are the same as the morphemes used to make the same word in another dialect.

Morphemes have 2 levels of ambiguity:1. a single morpheme (charcter) can have several meanings which are not always very related, 2. and that same morpheme will share the exact same pronounciation with several others different morphemes (characters). They don't become clear until you see the characters.

I'm am curious as to whether or not someone who has not learned characters is aware of these connections. ie, would a child not going to school yet know that the "ju4" in "wan2ju4" (toy) is the same "ju4" in "ju4you3" (possess)? When I thought about it, I found it impossible.

[atitarev]

I'm am curious as to whether or not someone who has not learned characters is aware of these connections. ie, would a child not going to school yet know that the "ju4" in "wan2ju4" (toy) is the same "ju4" in "ju4you3" (possess)? When I thought about it, I found it impossible.

Should they know? In Japanese, there are a lot of words that are no longer written in characters (more so in Korean) or it could be written either in characters or in just kana, even adults forget, how it is written and what individual components are.

For example the word きれい(な) kirei(na) - "beautiful". There are 2 character versions of the hiragana one. All 3 versions are used. Because the characters for writing the word are too complex, most people just write it in hiragana and don't know what the the constituent elements:

This is how it is written in characters with simplified writing and Mandarin pronunciation:

奇麗 (simplified: 奇丽) qílì

綺麗 (simplified: 绮丽) qǐlì

I think, the reason is, they consider the word as a total and are not worried about its origin and why it has sounds KI and REI.

In some cases, IMHO, characters used are not important at all, - in terms what they really mean and why they are used in a particular case, e.g. I know at least 4 versions of writing the word 宫宝鸡丁 (the second character, which could be bǎo or bào).

How do you express foreign or dialectal accents in Chinese?

他说: "你是澳洲人吗"?

Tā shuō: "Nǐ sì Àozōurén ma"?

versus

Tā shuō: "Nǐ shì Àozhōurén ma"?

or difference in pronunciation of 中国 (中國):

Zung1gwok3, Tiong1kok4 and Zhong1guo2