john Posted July 17, 2004 at 06:41 PM Report Share Posted July 17, 2004 at 06:41 PM Hi all. Long time listener, first time caller. I've searched the archives and haven't found information on what I am looking for. I am an avid learner of mandarin chinese. I am always interested in improving my accent and pronunciation. One great way to improve an accent, linguists have told me, is to get a tape (or cd or any kind of audio) of a native speaker and speak simultaneously with the speaker, repeating each sentence ten to twenty times (and the tape should be pretty long too, because this process takes a few months and you shouldn't repeat parts of the tape to many times because memorization does not help you at all). The speaker should be the same sex/gender as you, as most languages have differences in the way males and females talk (cultural, not biological). Anyway, what I am looking for is a tape of a male Beijing speaker (with a Beijing accent), at least an hour long, but preferably 2-3 hours long. It can be anything, like reading aloud from a book (like the "books on tape" that americans are familiar with), or giving a speech, or doing a documentary on a subject, or whatever. I was wondering if any of the members of the forum would know where I can get what I am looking for. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeijingSlacker Posted July 21, 2004 at 02:17 AM Report Share Posted July 21, 2004 at 02:17 AM Maybe I could make one just to earn some money Anyway, I would guess Chinese movies may be a good source since an unbalanced number of them are somehow in Beijing accent, which of course sometimes doesn't make sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atitarev Posted July 23, 2004 at 07:23 AM Report Share Posted July 23, 2004 at 07:23 AM I don't see your location in your profile but you should be able to buy books with tapes/CD's, borrow from a library. This site is great for beginners to intermediates: Simplified/Tradition/Pinyin/English translations/Audio (embedded in files) http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/chinese/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haoqide Posted July 29, 2004 at 11:18 PM Report Share Posted July 29, 2004 at 11:18 PM I'm working on that, too. My biggest problem right now is that most of the people I come into contact with are from Fujian province, so it's not the standard Beijing accent. Their "shi" sounds more like "si", among other things, so I have a REALLY hard time understanding lots of what they say, even when it's words I do know. hehe. Anybody got any tips for dealing with the HUGE differences in accents, besides just listening to them talking more and praying that I eventually get to recognize what they're saying??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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