Using Memory Palaces for Chinese Vocab and tones

[Publius]

Hmm, how about this: toneless Chinese is also predictable (there is no tone) and can be adapted to? To me, no tonal distinction is comparable to no distinction between voiceless/voiced pairs like p/b, t/d, k/g.

[imron]

I think that's the correct comparison.  And people could entirely replace t with d and k with g and be as understandable as someone who didn't use the correct tones.

[anonymoose]

2 hours ago, Publius said:

To me, no tonal distinction is comparable to no distinction between voiceless/voiced pairs like p/b, t/d, k/g.

 

Your proposition that tonality has a distinction comparable to voicing seems reasonable.

 

Anyway, to return to my argument, a scientific study has shown that processing of tones takes place in a different region of the brain compared to that of other parts of speech. This is objective evidence that tone has a distinct mechanism in differentiating sounds compared with initials and finals.

 

In the end, though, regardless of whether you choose to separate out tone with memory palaces, or just drill all facets of pronunciation as a single unit, it still takes of lot of repetition to ingrain pronunciation into the subconscious level.

[Balthazar]

9 hours ago, anonymoose said:

Anyway, to return to my argument, a scientific study has shown that processing of tones takes place in a different region of the brain compared to that of other parts of speech. This is objective evidence that tone has a distinct mechanism in differentiating sounds compared with initials and finals. 

 

Could you quote the relevant section(s)?

 

I seem to recall that there are several aspects of speech in most languages that differ in which part of the brain is activated, and that this is why a people who's had a stroke, for instance, may have trouble with substituting letters and stress and intonation, etc. Not sure if the article you linked to discuss this, I'm currently limited to a mobile device which is inconvenient for browsing larger articles, but will have a look when I'm back home.