Christina Lee
Do you find the tone or the general pronunciation more difficult when you learn Mandarin?

Do you find the tone or the general pronunciation more difficult when you learn Mandarin?

Do you find the system of Han-Yu Pinin really helpful when it comes to mastering the language with accuracy and pricision?

Sep 25, 2014 8:23 AM
Comments · 45
2

Garry you can put that sentence in your flashcard deck because if you're leveling up you'll probably use that sentence again :D

October 1, 2014
2

This is a very advanced phrase for me:
Wǒ zhù de chéngshì yěyǒu shuōfǎ (Jiǎng) wén (yǔ) de rén, dàn tāmen bùshì fàguó rén.
我住的城市也有说(讲) 法文(语) 的人,但他们不是法国人。
There is no way I was going to nail it at my current level, specialy because I keep "thinking" in English. 

October 1, 2014
2

Tgif, you're talking about stress, not intonations.

 

Intonation is important in English, but not in the same way as Chinese. In English, intonation really only matters on the last word of a sentence. A sentence ending with you2 is usually a question and a sentence ending with you4 is generally a statement. The thing is, it doesn't matter when 'you' is anywhere else in the sentence, and the same also applies to every other word in the English language. 

 

Unless a word is on its own or at the end of a sentence, changing its tone doesn't change the meaning of the word or the sentence at all.

Intonation is also important if you want to make your English sound pleasant. The key is to make sure a distiguishable pattern cannot be heard (ie. you should be neither speaking in a monitone nor in a song). You just have to make sure you're saying you're tones randomly (only the second, fourth and maybe first are necessary), but not to the point where you sound like Guilty Spark.

September 25, 2014
2

Christina Lee, I have found pinyin and practicing the tones absolutely essential. I tried for a long time to use Pimsleur for Mandarin and it was useless for me.  I couldn't figure out the sounds or remember anything. Then my language partner taught me pinyin with tones and we are now learning words and without that previous training I would find copying her impossible. I don't know much, but she says that what I can say is always understandable and sometimes with no foreign accent at all. Last night she said that she spoke to someone who studied Mandarin for years and even was in China, but she couldn't understand him and my pronunciation was better. Maybe I'm slow or stupid or something but I absolutely had to spend months of training in pinyin and tones to be able to even say one word in Mandarin... but I'd rather say one word right than thousands that Chinese people can't understand or sounds bad to natives! To answer your question, the tones and pronunciation of the sounds learning pinyin went hand-in-hand and now I can concentrate on copying exactly the musical, lilting and lovely accent of my language partner. To me, tones and pronunciation were both big monsters to conquer! By the way, I just went back to try Pimsleur again and NOW I can understand and remember and make use of it. I needed to learn pinyin and tones first. 

September 25, 2014
2

I remember a Chinese teacher explained for Western speakers the way to distinguish the four tones is through music note/frequency. For example,

 

1st tone: the highest frequency and keep flat;

2nd tone: a little bit lower than the 1st tone and ascending;

3rd tone: the lowest frequency and ascending;

4th tone: the same frequency with the 2nd tone but descending

 

We use Chu-Yin alphabets (注音符號) in Taiwan, which is a system of symbols that resemble Han-Yu Pinin but with more precision in my opinion. And I think it is a very good way to do the pronunciation drill!

September 25, 2014
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