Excellent quote regarding pronunciation

[suMMit]

I was working on Chinese Made Easier with my teacher this morning, and came to this quote in the book, right after we had finished our lesson:

 

“Are you continuing to work on perfecting your tones? This will take a lot of effort for a very long while - two years minimum and a lifetime maximum!  Remember that the beauty of your Chinese will depend on you aquiring good pronunciation and accurate tones”

 

I love this reminder/advice on so many levels. I have been doing my best at exactly this for over a year and will continue to do so. 

 

Thanks again @Martin Symonds 石明理 for writing such a great book series ( not to mention getting me the audio through this forum)

[roddy]

This is something I'm fond of saying. Traditionally pronunciation has been a chapter at the start of the beginners textbook and then never mentioned again. It should actually be an iterative process of getting closer and closer to a goal you hopefully reach one day. 

[murrayjames]

+1

 

I thought my tones were good, and get compliments on them. But recently I’ve come to realize I still make plenty of mistakes. What are some good ways for advanced Chinese learners to improve their tones?

[Yadang]

4 hours ago, murrayjames said:

I thought my tones were good, and get compliments on them. But recently I’ve come to realize I still make plenty of mistakes

 

What kind of mistakes? Using the wrong tones when speaking? Or using the correct tones but not saying them completely correctly? Or something else? 

[matteo]

Quote

Or using the correct tones but not saying them completely correctly?

I think I (at the very least!) fall in this category!I really make an effort to use the right tones but it is really hard for me to gauge how close I am to a correct pronunciation. 

 

Part of the issue is that - being not in China -  the only person I can have a conversation with in Chinese at the moment is my teacher, who knows me quite well and understands what I say no matter how badly I say it. She's also a friend so tends not to be too strict (I probably need to ask her to help me improving).

 

I'e been looking into ways to have unbiased opinions and corrections on this points but can't see many options. I've downloaded Hello talk hoping that it could be helpful but after a couple of days came to the conclusion that it is a social network for teenagers and uninstalled it (could be wrong here). Any suggestion is appreciated. 

 

 

[murrayjames]

13 hours ago, Yadang said:

What kind of mistakes? Using the wrong tones when speaking? Or using the correct tones but not saying them completely correctly? Or something else? 

 

I mean using the wrong tones when speaking.

 

When I first started learning Chinese, my tone mistakes impeded conversation. Corrections and confused looks from conversation partners were common.

 

After many years of study, tone mistakes get in the way a lot less. Since conversation partners can usually infer mispronounced words from context, I no longer receive corrective feedback. If anything, I get the opposite, e.g., “Oh, don’t worry about the tones. Your pronunciation is good enough already.”

 

(For reference, a recent example of me speaking in Chinese:

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/19910-post-a-sample-of-your-pronunciation-here/?do=findComment&comment=456293 )

 

What are some good ways to continue to improve my tones?

[calibre2001]

1 hour ago, murrayjames said:

What are some good ways to continue to improve my tones?

 

I used to hire a native speaker who would listen to my 朗讀 (complete with pinyin transcript) & she would highlight which words were mispronounced (i.e. you used tone 3 instead of tone 1).

Painful but worthwhile.

 

 

[murrayjames]

5 hours ago, calibre2001 said:

I used to hire a native speaker who would listen to my 朗讀 (complete with pinyin transcript) & she would highlight which words were mispronounced (i.e. you used tone 3 instead of tone 1).

 

Yes, good advice. After a decade of self study—with lots of help from others along the way—it may be time to get a proper teacher.

[roddy]

You may know this, as it comes up on here now and then, but if you can find a teacher who specializes in the 普通话水平测试, you're well on your way. Natural habitat is teacher and broadcasting training schools, but may also be found in the wild. 

 

Those people, in my experience, really know their stuff.  

[Andrew1556]

Great advice! Always be a life long learner

[道艺]

On 9/27/2019 at 11:11 AM, murrayjames said:

What are some good ways to continue to improve my tones?

I taught a 2nd grade class the other day where most/all of the students had come from public school prior. Some have almost no English. 

 

One kid just wasn't getting the difference between "There aren't many/any apples." After the 4th time trying to explain, I quickly hopped to Chinese: “There aren't any apples 是什么意思？表达没有苹果了！看一下我们的图片。还有苹果吗？有！所以我们应该说：There aren't many apples left! 意思就是桌子上还有苹果！"

 

What followed, of course, was the class erupting in laughter, saying ‘没有’ in a neutral tone mocking my 老外口音. Yeah it was a good wake-up call as I can get lazy sometimes with pronunciation. So I try to speak to new people constantly to remove the bias. And you can be sure I'm going back to that 2nd grade class to see if they laugh at my pronunciation again!