tones again, some hard evidence

[owen]

I always used to wonder about tones in music. I now realize they are impossible* (at least in the westernized pop music, couldn't comment on any traditional forms). One can only conclude that chinese lyrics must be lacking in expressiveness being deprived of such a crucial indicator of meaning. That is to say, unless one is singing in a very predictable context, a purely aural listener would easily get lost.

*i'm just waiting for someone to come in and try to tell me that they can hear tones when they listen to pop music. When i was beginning to learn chinese and asked people about this many csl learners told me they could hear them but no native speakers could honestly say the same. I guess in a sense they may have been hearing them in their mind's ear.

[HashiriKata]

*i'm just waiting for someone to come in and try to tell me that they can hear tones when they listen to pop music.

I certainly can hear tones in music !

But let's not be making sweeping claims here: the problems with tone in Chinese music is not far different from the situations we may face with music in any other languages. In English, we sometimes have no problems with understanding (=making out the words in) the lyrics and at other times we have no clues what's being sung. Even when we know/understand the lyrics, we also realise that sometimes the pronunciation is a bit off the way we normally speak. Chinese tones are similarly sometimes distorted due to the contour of the music or the type of the music, but not always and not in normal circumstances. Anyway, there have been interesting discussions about this relation in this forums, try a search and you may find them.

[roddy]

That is to say, unless one is singing in a very predictable context, a purely aural listener would easily get lost.

There's not a more predictable context than a Chinese pop song . . .

[owen]

Chinese tones are similarly sometimes distorted due to the contour of the music or the type of the music, but not always and not in normal circumstances.

i don't think their sometimes distorted. I'm 100% sure that they are almost never there. Unless you're listening to some very strange songs that build the tones into the melody (which would sound pretty strange, i'd be interested to hear), then it's impossible to simultaneously sing a melody (as we know it) and account for tones.

As for the predictable context, imagine a song like this being sung in chinese. I think without a lyric sheet the listener would be totally lost. Whereas most of the words can be understood in english if one pays close attention.

Points for identifying the song by the way.

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -

Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn -

world serves its own needs, don't misserve your own needs. Feed it up a knock,

speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height,

down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for

hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies

breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered

crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population,

common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its

own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the

reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright

light, feeling pretty psyched.

[in_lab]

In Chinese the listener would have a really hard time making sense of all that, but the same goes for English. If those lyrics have meaning for you, it is probably only because you have read and thought about the lyrics. After "It starts with an earthquake," the words don't really mean anything to me.

[wai ming]

Unless you're listening to some very strange songs that build the tones into the melody (which would sound pretty strange, i'd be interested to hear), then it's impossible to simultaneously sing a melody (as we know it) and account for tones.

AFAIK, most Cantonese songs follow the tones in their melodies.

[owen]

in_lab, you missed my point. All i'm saying is that the words themselves, individually can, for the most part, be deciphered. Like if walked up to you and said 'horse sunny jazz then italicize ballon can't soup very', you might look puzzled but you would know the words which had been said.

I'm not sure the same could be done in chinese, at least not in a song.

I asked my friend who majored in jazz vocal and who currently sings pop and jazz with a few different ensembles. I asked her whether she has ever heard any canto pop and she said she had. Then i also showed her a jolin tsai song and she said in that song or in any canto pop she's heard she didn't notice any marked difference between the singing style of those songs and western pop, i.e. no tones in either.

Someone should do a test. Get a native speaker who can sing decently and then write a randomn string of characters. Ask them to sing it to some popular tune and have another native speaker listen. Then see how many tones they can get right. I'd bet my life they would get no more than pure chance would allow.

[wai ming]

Erm, just a minor point... but I'm pretty sure Jolin Tsai doesn't sing in Cantonese

And while there might not be any difference in singing style, the tones of the lyrics of most Cantonese songs will fit the melodies. You might find this link of interest.

[Quest]

the tones of the lyrics of most Cantonese songs will fit the melodies.

Too much so now that the lyrics become nonsensical garbage.

[in_lab]

Owen, I understood your point, but what I meant is that it doesn't really matter. In Chinese it can be difficult to understand words devoid of meaningful context, but words that are devoid of meaningful context are essentially meaningless. In English, you understand the words, but they mean nothing.

[owen]

Owen, I understood your point, but what I meant is that it doesn't really matter. In Chinese it can be difficult to understand words devoid of meaningful context, but words that are devoid of meaningful context are essentially meaningless. In English, you understand the words, but they mean nothing.

So what about modern poetry like T.S. Elliot or E.E. Cummings? I think that use of words is perhaps at the absolute height of meaning. Hyper meaningful.

If you were watching the writer of those lyrics writing, erasing, and rewriting would you just step in and say, "excuse me, all that is pointless cuz in the end your words don't adhere to grammatical standards etc. You might as well just choose words at randomn."?

Or perhaps i am missing your point.

Erm, just a minor point... but I'm pretty sure Jolin Tsai doesn't sing in Cantonese

Did i suggest in any way that she does??

Then i also showed her a jolin tsai song and she said in that song or in any canto pop she's heard she didn't notice...

Had i thought that jolin sung in cantonese i would have written that differently...

"So i showed her a jolin tsai song and she said in that song and any other canto pop she's heard she didn't notice... "

Good link though. She should be the one doing the test i mentioned.

[wai ming]

Sorry Owen. I just got confused by the reference to Jolin when I thought we were discussing Cantonese music

[owen]

As for the article that waiming posted, it's pretty interesting, although it's sort of a different issue. It's claim is that cantonese songs have a "tone-melody" interface. That is, they preserve the tones lyrically/compositionally as opposed to being a performative preservation in the hands of the vocalist. Furthermore, she concludes, albeit tangentially, that mandarin melodies obliterate tone contours without exception.

Here's the conclusion:

5. CONCLUSION.

The impressionistic observation that modern Cantonese songs tend to preserve the relative pitch levels and pitch contours of lexical tones is borne out. Furthermore, the effect of foreign melodies and foreign phrases is negligible. Tempo is the only important factor in affecting the tone-melody interface. A loss, or partial loss, of pitch contours occurs on rising tones in faster-paced songs. Nevertheless, crucially, the loss does not result in tonal mismatches.

The same results do not hold for modern Mandarin songs, where neither relative pitch height nor pitch contours are sacred. This can be demonstrated with a simple example. Figure 4 shows the narrowband spectrographic tracings of the first line of the Happy Birthday song read in (a). In (B), the words are sung to the well-known English tune, "Happy birthday to you." The lexical tones are completely obliterated in (B). Corresponding lyrics do not exist for Cantonese, precisely because the words not only need to convey the desired message simply and naturally, but they must also form a sequence of tones that harmonizes with the melody.

[kudra]

I am going to a parent/tot Mandarin immersion class taught by native speakers with my 2 yr old. The class uses some kids songs to reinforce vocabulary. There is also plenty of plain spoken language games and play. As was pointed out here, the tonal component of the vocabulary is lost in the songs. There are other languages taught at the school, German, French, Italian, Spanish. I suspect Mandarin was added after the approach and types of activities were already fixed in place with the other languages.

Now it looks like all or most of the Mandarin teachers have experience teaching little kids back in Taiwan or China. Generally I am impressed with the program. I am just wondering, about the extent of the use of songs to teach and reinforce vocab and general language to the kids, especially kids who are probably hearing all or mostly Englist at home.

If I didn't see this working out fairly well, I would have said a mandarin tots class should have zero time with songs since that is just class time spent "doing Mandarin without tones." But in terms of keeping kids engaged, and having fun (these are 2-4 yr olds) I am not going to make a big deal of this.

What do others thinkabout the use of songs to teach Mandarin to young kids? Is it a problem that the tone component of the vocabulary is washed out when sung? Perhaps it is appropriate to do fewer songs in a Mandarin class than in say a Spanish class. Is this the idea behind chants that I seem to have read about somewhere?

[wushijiao]

What do others thinkabout the use of songs to teach Mandarin to young kids? Is it a problem that the tone component of the vocabulary is washed out when sung?

It seems like learning songs would be a good idea, as you said, because kids learn vocab and have fun. I would also place less emphasis on songs for non-native Chinese kids learning Mandarin, than, say, I would for Spanish. However, I’d bet that songs, combined with playgroups, reading books to kids, TV for the Mainland…etc, would be a good component in learning Chinese. I’d be interested to know what parents/educators think about this. I’ve noticed that young Chinese kids (2-5) tend to have much more exaggerated tones when they speak, and by extension, no matter where you travel to, young kids always seem to have the thickest accents. It’d be fascinating to analyze how Chinese parents “baby talk” to their babies, and see if that speech has any exaggerated components, like tones, and then try to model a basic Mandarin course on re-creating that type of speech.

I also wonder about the role of poetry in learning Chinese. Young Chinese kids seem to be always memorizing Tang and Song poetry. I suspect that the rationale might be to teach them vocab, tones, (possible character recognition), and cultural heritage at the same time. Many poems are also fairly short, and wouldn’t be too hard for a kid to memorize, although I doubt its appropriateness for a two-year-old.

[ophion]

There's not a more predictable context than a Chinese pop song . . .

Wo ai ni.

[Gulao]

Having been a "teacher," as it were, in an immersion environment, I can honestly say that people won't give a wit about tones unless they understand their importance. This is the same whether each vocab is taught people with clear tones or with songs. Songs aren't there so much to introduce vocabulary as they are to put words in context, so their meaning is easier to memorize. Furthermore, they're a great deal of fun for the kids.

The tones are memorized in poems, or they should be. When reading poems, at least at our program, the tones are spoken very clearly, and each syllable is given equal weight.

[skylee]

I have not read the posts of this thread. But something that happened today seems to fit the title of the thread.

I was at the lift lobby of my office and a woman came along and asked the Nepalese security guard where 稅務局 was (in Cantonese). The woman had an accent and what I heard was 稅務局, and apparently the Nepalese guard heard the same. So he directed her to another building. The woman was unhappy as she had just been told to come to this building. Another woman who was waiting for the lift then asked her if she wanted to go to 稅務局 (which is in another building) or 水務局 (which is in fact called 水務署and is in this building). The woman had to repeat the term several times to make people understand that she wanted to go to 水務局.

In Cantonese the pronunciations of the two terms are the same, except that the tones of 稅 and 水 are different.

Sorry if this is irrelevant.

[kudra]

@ skylee, on the contrary, exactly right.

It might be helpful for beginners who are browsing around, and have recieved mixed signals about the importance of tones, if they could refer to a catalog of actual encounters like this where tone was important, in fact the bottleneck, for effective communication.

Of course there are the hypothetical warnings in the first semester, about calling someone's mother a horse, but I don't think beginners realize how pervasive the importance of tone can be.

Perhaps skylee could provide some romanization and specify the tones for the previous example.

I propose keeping a catalog on this thread of real-life examples. Mandarin or Cantonese.

Of course if no further examples appear ....

[skylee]

Re #38 and #39. In Putonghua, 稅務局 is "shui4 wu4 ju2" and 水務局 is "shui3 wu4 ju2". In Cantonese, they are "seoi3 mou6 guk6" and "seoi2 mou6 guk6" respectively (the Cantonese terms are romanised in jyutping as many members (not me) here seem to prefer it; jyutping is not popular in HK AFAIK, though).

My boss told us a story today. She went to dinner at a restaurant and her party was asked to move to another table so as to make room for another party, which was a large party obviously wanting to celebrate over something. The restaurant explained that this other party had made a booking over the phone for 三位 (three persons / san1 wei4 / saam1 wai2 or 6). But in fact they had meant to reserve 三圍 (three tables / san1 wei2 / saam wai4) [圍 for table is Cantonese]. And that was in fact a wedding banquet (although modest) and the bride was so miserable. The miscommunication was incredible but I think it is a good example of the importance of tones.