Don't insist too much on the tones, focus on the rythm

[studychinese]

I did more or less what the OP said and I am regretting it now. I realise now that I should have had a take no prisoners approach to remembering tones with words, and now I am forced to play catch up.

[Guest realmayo]

studychinese, I don't think the OP -- or at least the OP's teacher -- is saying don't learn the tones.

What is being advised is that insisting on pronouncing every tone will lead to unnatural speech. 

 

Demonic_duck, sorry I must have misread it. No one's going to disagree that trying to speak like Chinese speakers will help you speak good Chinese.

 

The subject has "don't insist too much": I think it's a reasonable point that one can insist too much. Most people don't tell learners that. They just say: you've got to focus on tones.

[imron]

I should have had a take no prisoners approach to remembering tones with words

A better approach is to learn to hear and distinguish the tones correctly, and then based on that remember the audible sound of the word.  If you need to know the tone you can then work backwards from the audible sound.  Never treat the sound and the tone as separate entities, you'll just be making things more difficult.

[anonymoose]

A better approach is to learn to hear and distinguish the tones correctly, and then based on that remember the audible sound of the word.  If you need to know the tone you can then work backwards from the audible sound.

 

In theory, this is undoubtedly the best way to learn, and indeed what native speakers do. However, I find that in practice it is not so easy to do. I don't think it's due to a lack of exposure or practice, as I have been living in China and using Chinese on a daily basis for several years. I guess it's like some people are able to remember virtually the entire script of a movie (including intonation) just from having heard it a few time, or the lyrics to a song, or are able to impersonate other accents and their intonation. I'm always surprised at how people can do this, and whether they put effort in to do it, because it certainly doesn't come naturally to me.

 

I guess after having used Chinese for so long, most of the commonly used words I do have the tone pattern ingrained in my mind without having to think about it. But for the less frequently used vocabulary, which one really needs if one wants to be able to talk in depth on any topic, often I have to consciously think about the tone, which diverts away brain capacity from carrying other aspects of the conversation.

[imron]

If I tell you to think of the tune to 'Twinkle, twinkle little star' in your head are you able to do that and 'hear' it without using your vocal chords?

 

That's the same skill you need.  It's not about being able to impersonate accents, just being able to hear them - for example, can you imagine in your mind the difference between Darth Vader speaking and Bart Simpson speaking?  If so, then you have the necessary ability, you just need to purposefully work on the skill.

[anonymoose]

"Twinke twinke little star" is a very basic tune, one of few which is drummed into practically every English speaker's head over and over as a child. There aren't many such tunes that fall into this category, "Frere Jacques" and a few others maybe. Learning Chinese, where you have to literally memorise thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of "tunes" is an entirely different order of magnitude. And yes, if you want to speak, as opposed to just listen, it is exactly about being able to impersonate accents. The problem I have is not with the skill - I can hear very clearly the difference between tones - but rather with commiting them to memory. I don't think your analogy is good - I'm sure you have no problem thinking of the tune to "Twinkle, twinkle little star" in your head, but would you be able to do that from memory with a repertoire of thousands of tunes? Or perhaps it may be more accurate to say, would you be able to associate the correct tune out of a repertoire of 16 for each of thousands of different vocabulary items (which is essentially what one has to do with bisyllabic words in Chinese, if the neutral tone is neglected).

[Juliette (法珠雷)]

realmayo, (and several other posters ) : Yes, I think that's what my teacher was aiming at, and I tend to agree. Whenever I hear Chinese people speaking, I feel only two or three tones/syllables truly "distinguish" themselves. Doesn't mean the other tones aren't used, but they are barely distinguishable. It's sort of like, say, the difference between saying "I am going to get " with every word perfectly pronounced, and "I'm gonna get". Seems to me unless you're making a speech, the latter is much more natural.

That said, I know I have to work on the tones, more than I currently do, and while I think imitation is a pretty good way to learn, it is kind of laconic.

[Lu]

A better approach is to learn to hear and distinguish the tones correctly, and then based on that remember the audible sound of the word. If you need to know the tone you can then work backwards from the audible sound. Never treat the sound and the tone as separate entities, you'll just be making things more difficult.

I think you should do both: drill the tones when you learn 生词 and also listen to & imitate native speakers. Many learners don't have that much input from native speakers and it would be easy to be too 随便 about tones if you don't study them by yourself. I completely agree that tone and sound are not, and should not be treated as, separate entities.

[Guest realmayo]

This topic got me thinking, but it involves technical stuff I don't understand -- hopefully someone can help?

 

A full-on description of how to make a given Chinese vowel: that will involve telling you what to do with your mouth/tongue/lips/throat etc. But, that will be different depending on the tone, right?

[imron]

one of few which is drummed into practically every English speaker's head over and over as a child

And here you've hit upon the key.  You need to drum the basic sounds of Mandarin (including tones) in to your head over and over until it's trivial to recall them mentally.  You don't need to do it for tens of thousands - probably only a few dozen because once you've got the ability nailed down for core set of pinyin syllables, it will carry over to any other pinyin syllables that you want to remember too.

 

Then it's no more difficult/arduous to remember the audible sound than it is to remember pinyin+tone - and actually I would say it is in fact easier.

[AdamD]

I know a handful of people who learned to speak Chinese by the rhythm method (which is what I'm calling this from now on). Their speech is quick and fluid, and they're understood by native speakers most of the time. Most of the time.

Occasionally I'll hear them say a pretty basic word that native speakers don't understand, because they're relying on ~the vibe~ in lieu of knowing the actual tones, and there's inevitably a stand-off. My conversational Chinese is embarrassing, but I've been able to break some of those stand-offs by offering the word with correct tones.

That's where the rhythm method fails. But hey, if you're willing to forego an orthodox chunk of the language for the sake of fluency, go for it. We're all going to die eventually. Perhaps I should have done it that way myself. Mckk's got a point.

In response to imron:
 

You need to drum the basic sounds of Mandarin (including tones) in to your head over and over until it's trivial to recall them mentally.  You don't need to do it for tens of thousands - probably only a few dozen because once you've got the ability nailed down for core set of pinyin syllables, it will carry over to any other pinyin syllables that you want to remember too.

 

Yes! In my experience, if you understand deeply how tones work in context, you can derive the tones in new words from how they're pronounced. It feels a bit like reverse engineering.