Chinese Character - “I wish I’d known that years ago…” -

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“I wish I’d known that years ago…”
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realmayo -

I wonder if anyone has any suggestions:

Are there any discoveries – from great eurekas to a simple satisfied ah-ha – that people have
made learning Chinese? Something which you wished you’d known, say, a year after starting rather
than three or four years of never realising?

My example may sound a bit daft. I’d never realised that with the rising second tone you don’t
need to start right from the bottom and rise to the top, but start mid-way or higher and rise from
there. A really simple thing but made it much easier to speak!

(putting this in speaking and listening forum but don't want to limit it to speaking and listening)



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roddy -

Learn words, not characters.
Learn tones in word / phrase groups, not in single syllable isolation.


Quote:

(putting this in speaking and listening forum but don't want to limit it to speaking and listening)

Will move it then . . .










heifeng -

Ok, this isn't really a "eureka" more of ^&*(&( why didn't anyone try to correct me more earlier
instead of letting me get away with it for so long...as a native English speaker apparently my
lv vs. lu; &
chu vs. qu;
distinction wasn't great. It wasn't 'till I hunted down a really anal pronunciation tutor who
would yell at me enough was I able to fix these... Here are some other things a native English
speaker may have difficulties with...prononciation maybe pronounced too much in throat or nasal as
opposed to being more outward at mouth like a native Chinese (I just imagine trying to spit out
each word and really loudly...wow, more native Chinese-sounding already). Also (maybe it was just
my lazy xxxx (insert USA where speakers English standards are very questionable) English carrying
over to my Chinese) but my "t" would be a little close to a d or q, without an adequate puff of
air at top teeth and tongue. But then again it's really annoying focusing too hard on
pronunciating stuff after awhile and you forget what you were originally trying to say.

Also I use to make my 3rd tone way too long and exagerated...

(I say all this only b/c if u refer to some GAO JI HSK KOUSHI books they may only talk about
Korean and Japanese student pronunciation issues...Now if only some of my Korean friends can learn
to pronounce 'yue' correctly and my Japanese ones can fix the f vs. h problem we'll all just have
nearly perfect pronunciation...hehe)










wai ming -

I only just discovered recently that the 数 in "大多数" is in fact fourth tone, and not third
tone as I've been pronouncing it for the past 5+ years... Really wish one of my Chinese teachers
had nipped that one in the bud.

On a somewhat related note, it was good when I realised that some words take different tones
depending on the function of the word, eg
卷: juan3 (verb) vs juan4 (noun)
中: zhong1 (noun, adjective) vs zhong4 (verb)
种: zhong3 (noun) vs zhong4 (verb)
and of course, 数: shu3 (verb) vs shu4 (noun).










AlexBrit -

Interesting post Haifeng.

About v versus u. Most native speakers of English have this problem from the beginning as we make
a very lazy 'u' sound as in 'food'.

I wrestled with this problem not just a few years ago when studying Chinese, but many years ago
when I was studying French, as one needs to distinguish between the sounds as in 'vu' or 'vous' or
'du' or 'doux' etc. In my opinion, (and after several hours in front of a mirror), I decided it
was basically a case of forward or backward tongue, with the same basic mouth shape in the two
cases - rounded, forward lips.

If you take Mandarin 'road' - 路 (lu) and then 绿 (lv), I think the former requires the tongue
pulled back into the throat, whilst the latter needs the tongue pushed forward touching the back
of the bottom teeth.

The latter, I think, is the hardest for my students studying either French or Mandarin.

A colleague gave us a nice hint the other week. To produce this sound, push the lips forward in a
tight, rounded, o-shape (as if to whistle). Then try to produce in an 'e' sound, as in 'week'.

I think we make something like the v in Mandarin.

And in fitting with the thread, no my Mandarin teachers didn't tell me that!

(Please correct if you have any objections.)










gougou -

I wish I had started to read real-life Chinese texts earlier. After about 1.5 yrs of study I
picked up a copy of 读者 for the first time (bar the 30-hr train ride without English reading
materials a year earlier, where I managed to work my way through one paragraph before hurling the
magazine through the compartment), only to find out that I was able to understand most of it.I
figure that, had I started earlier, it would have saved a lot of time that I spent on memorizing
characters.










Roee -

"A colleague gave us a nice hint the other week. To produce this sound, push the lips forward in a
tight, rounded, o-shape (as if to whistle). Then try to produce in an 'e' sound, as in 'week'"

This is what I used while studying in Taiwan and upon arriving to the mainland was taunted that it
sounds like a Taiwanese'; and indeed, the mainlanders dont seem to pronounce it this way -- or am
I missing something?










WilsonFong -

I thought the difference between the u in 路 (lu) and the v in 绿 (lv) was simply that the u was
the same pronunciation as "oo" in English (e.g. moon) and the v was simply the same as the German
"u" with the umlaut, hence why it also has the umlaut in pinyin, but now that I'm reading so many
posts about difficulties in distinguishing them I'm starting to have doubts. Does anyone know of
any online pronunciation guides with audio files? http://www.chinese-lessons.com/Mandarin/Pinyin/
doesn't seem to be working










kudra -

@ WilsonFong

for sound, go to the advanced page in adsotrans
http://www.adsotrans.com/new.html
paste in

路

and select sounds.

compare with

绿

My impression is that given what you said, your pronounciation, although perhaps not matching what
I heard in the audio from adsotrans, will be within the acceptable variation existing in native
speakers. Or maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part.










HashiriKata -

This is probably what you want:
http://lost-theory.org/chinese/phonetics/












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