Let’s address the first
issue. It is important to be mindful and practice through the lesson.
Chinese is a tonal language.
This doesn’t only mean that words are made of various tones, it also means that
the meaning of the
worlds relies on specific tones and inflections.
In English, which many
people consider it non-tonal language, tones do exist. However, they are not of
primary concern, because the meanings of the words do not depend on their
various tones, but their vowel sounds. In theory, the same tones can be used to
visually represent syllables that make up the words in non-tonal languages.
Your first challenge in
learning to speak Mandarin Chinese will be learning the tonal variations, The
chat below illustrates 4 tones (plus a “neutral” one) of a Chinese syllable.
Many second language
instructions tell you to listen carefully, which is a logical approach.
However, learning to speak proficient Mandarin Chinese requires learning both
the pronunciation and the tonal inflection. Let’s practice the following
sentences with and without tonal inflections:
Wo zai xue zhong wen --> Wǒ zài xué zhōng-wén
Wo yao xue hao zhong wen --> Wǒ yào xué hǎo zhōng-wén
Imagine the effort in
trying to read an entire sentence by pronouncing each individual letter. Even
if your are great at pronunciation and people can understand you, it still
sounds like a “robotic voice” to native speakers. In order to speak
understandable Mandarin Chinese, we need to put more emphasis on the tones and
reinforce them with “tone pair drills”. Within the “tone pair drills”, the
sentence of the phrase would vary depending on the choice of tone in the words.
- The first tone (ā): The voice is more flat
with high ripple sound.
- The second tone (á): With a rising mark. The
voice starts high and then rises.
- The third tone (ǎ): With
a curve mark. The voice falls first and then rises.
- The forth tone (à): The voice starts high and falls.
For example:
Mā 媽 mother
Má 麻 hemp
Mǎ 馬 horse
Mà 罵 scold
Tone pair drills basically
involve practicing tones in combination rather than individually to show the
relationship between subjects and objects. Here are some reason why tone pair
drills are important:
(1) They force you to notice the distinctions between
tones, so you do not mix them up and cause confusion.
(2) Tone
pair drills are a natural intermediate step to learn complete understandable
Chinese.
(3) The challenge for Chinese tones is that they are
not static. They are dynamic and change based on the sequence of tones.
For example:
睡覺 shuì jiào means "sleep"
水餃 shuǐ
jiǎo means "dumplings"
一些 yì xiē means "a few"
一直 yì zhí means "continue; straight ahead"
一點 yì diǎn means "a little"
一定 yí dìng means "certain"
不好 bù hǎo means "not good"
不謝 bú xiè means "don’t mention it"
Tips on learning Mandarin
Chinese tones:
As we know the simple
approach for learning a second language is to simply start a word, phase, or
simple sentence and then move forward towards its complete components. Based on
my experience, here are some suggestions alongside the lesson.
(1) To reinforce the 5 tones in speaking Mandarin
Chinese, we need to stress them greatly even with the head or hand gestures. It
also exactly how teachers guide students to learn in China and Taiwan.
(2) Take special care in differentiating retroflex
consonants (such as zh, ch, shi) from normal ones (z, j, s) and aspirated (p,
t) from non-aspirated ones (b, d).
(3) Once you having a general understanding of Chinese
phonetics, start considering simple sentences and listening to them with your
eyes closed.
(4) With completed sentences, pay attention on the tone
pair drills and understand the position for emphasis.
