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mirgcire -

Imron,

I have a friend who started learning chinese at the same time as me. He figured out how to hear
and reproduce tones in about 1 hour. He suggested "question intonation" as a way to reproduce the
second tone, and that really helped. It allowed me to hear and reproduce it better. That was two
years ago. I am always looking for new ideas so if you have anymore let me know.

I just recently discovered that by feeling the vibrations in my throat I could have more control
over the two tones that give me the most trouble. More specifically, yesterday I realised that if
I limit the vibration to my thoat I have a better approximation to 4th tone, but if I let it
resonate in my chest it comes out as 3rd tone. I think I have made some improvements, but I have
yet to get confirmation from a native speaker.

Assuming this works, I will have to go back and reeducate my autonomic response system (so to
speak) to associate the sound and physical vibration to words of the language. This already what I
was doing - but I have to be more precise about the 3/4 tones. I think this is possible. The key
is that I can not rely on my ears alone, I have to use a secondary strategy.

I will also check out the SIL software ... thanks!



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necroflux -

Mirgcire I certainly don't intend to marginalize the difficulty of getting a grasp of the Chinese
tones, or the fact that it comes easier for some than others. And make no mistake I still
struggle, for me the 2nd and 3rd tones can be hard to distinguish.

Do you hear the tonal differences in the English sentence imron put up? Great idea BTW Imron. I
think English has every bit as much tonal variation as Chinese, although it's not used throughout
the entire sentence.










imron -

@mirgcire - I think concentrating on your vocal chords (i.e. the vibrations in your throat) is the
key here, and perhaps part of your difficulty previously has been due to your association of the
different tones with the different parts of you that were resonating.

If you can hear and pronounce the difference between the statement "you can't hear tones" and the
question "you can't hear tones?", then it's not too hard to use that as a base and expand that to
tones of Chinese.

The first step is to narrow the changing tone down to just one word - in the sentence I gave,
obviously it's the word "tones". So keep practising until you can isolate that one word but still
pronounce it either as a statement (this will result in a mid/low flat tone), or as a question
(this will result in a rising tone). This rising tone is a good approximation of the second tone
in Chinese and these two sounds will also give you a good approximation of your tonal range (with
your "statement" being close to the bottom of your range, and the end of the "question" being
close to the top of your range). The pitch of the different tones are relative to each other and
so by getting a good feel for this rising tone you can use that feeling to understand how to say
the other tones correctly.

The tone to try next is the first tone. Looking at any tone chart, you will see that the pitch of
the first tone should be the same as the ending pitch of the second tone. So, pay attention to how
your vocal chords are at the end of the rising tone, and practice making a constant sound at that
same pitch. At first you may need to practice this by just prolonging the sound when you reach the
peak of your rising tone, but then you should keep practicing until you can then say a word at
that pitch without first needing to get a feel for it by practicing your rising tone. This becomes
your first tone.

Once you've got this sound, then you can move to the fourth tone. The fourth tone needs to start
in the same place as the end of the first tone. So practice by saying a nice long first tone, but
then at the end, drop the pitch down to slightly lower than when you were saying "tone" as a
statement. Keep practising this for a while, starting with a nice long first tone and then
dropping the pitch at the end so you get used to starting the tone at a high pitch. Once you've
got a good grasp of that, then try to isolate just the part at the end without doing a long first
tone at the beginning. This will be your fourth tone.

Finally you can move onto the third tone. This one should start at about the same pitch as when
you were pronouncing "tone" as a statement, dip down a little bit and then rise.

It's really then just a matter of practicing this over and over again, making sure that the
relative starting and ending pitches of the different tones match up. It's also worth noting, that
when you're practicing this, you don't need to practice with a Chinese word, it's perfectly ok to
practice with an English word because once you've got the hang of it you can apply it to any sound
at all.

This is pretty much the way I got my head around the tones when I started learning. The key is to
pay attention to how your vocal chords make a given pitch and make sure that the starting/ending
pitches of the tones are all correct relative to each other. Once you practice it enough then it
starts to become automatic and you will find it much easier to recognise tones when other people
are speaking them.










rose~ -

I suppose a point of hope is that you do have the ability to use tones in speaking and listening
to English, because English does have tones as well as Chinese as described above, so the key is
finding a way to activate that ability with regards to Chinese.

I wonder if you can read music or play a musical instrument? My idea is that it would be helpful
to begin learning an instrument where the musician determines the exact pitch of the note produced
such as a fretless string instrument, or singing lessons. That way you would be able to have fun
at the same time as activating and improving your listening abilities. It would mean training your
ear, which is something musicians do, so in a way a good music teacher might be one of the best
people to hone this ability. Learning an instrument means hours of focus on the sound one is
producing, which I think would be of benefit to you. Although some people have "perfect pitch",
others (like me) have had to train hard at things such as singing back melodies, adding harmonies,
notating music in an exam etc., it's not always something we're born with. I think a really good
music teacher (maybe a Chinese-speaking one) would be someone experienced in this area who might
be able to help you through music.

I hope you won't interpret my suggestion as underestimating the difficulty of being tone deaf.

Edit: I don't know whether I explained why I think it would be useful well enough. What I mean is
that for example, if you are singing in a choir or playing in an ensemble, you must hear the pitch
that others are creating and by interpreting that, produce your own pitch accordingly. Or even
playing alone, a music teacher is someone whose very job is to help someone towards training their
ear and being able to hear notes. Some of the scary ones might have you in tears but in the end
it's worth it!










mirgcire -

It is true that there are tones in English, and I usually don't have much trouble knowing when
someone is asking me a question. I have had very little experience with music. However,
participation in choir was not optional for us parochial school kids. I remember being singled out
as hopelessly out of key by the choir instructor and told to just sing softly.

My friend Mark (the one who learned tones in 1 hour) suggested that it might be a developmental
condition - rather than physical. In China children will exercise the part of the brain that
distinguishs tones very early in life, where as many of us westerners did not get that type of
stimulus. It is well known that the ability of the brain to distinguish between sounds diminishes
considerably after about 18 months. For example, if you were not exposed to distinct "r" and "l"
sounds of English before 18 months, you will be unlikely to be able to accuratedly distinguish
between them later in life.

My wife has perfect pitch. I am sure she would shoot me (or herself) if I started to practice
singing on a regular basis.










dynaemu -

Funny, I ace that tone test that necroflux posted each time o_O maybe i do hear em?










kudra -

For an example of the 4th tone in English, think of giving an command, say to a dog, "Sit."
"Stay." "No". As long as you are firmly telling the dog to do that, it will come out 4th tone. If
you are wimpy and "ask" the dog to sit, it won't come out 4th tone, more probably 2nd tone, and
the dog will probably not obey either.

I usually describe the 1st tone as a "sung" syllable. Normally when you sing, the pitch does not
change over the syllable. (Unless you are singing a glissando, or country/western)

So, 1st tone, sung, 2nd tone, question, 4th tone -- command. 3rd tone is the other one. Maybe a
highly skeptical "Wha-at?"

my 2 cents.










flameproof -



Quote:

Does anyone have experience with software that can record your voice and provide visual feed back
on tone changes?

Forget it! I heard that even native Beijingers often fail with those. It's highly unreliable and
no help at all.

But I have the same problem. I just do 1st a little higher, 3rd a little longer, 4th a little
lower.

I build up vocab first and do tones "later". I have to add, I am very often in China and have
little problems to be understood.










leosmith -



Quote:

I have used the pinyin practice web site and can score okay, but not consistently.

When I first started out, I used pinyin practice a lot. This is probably a dumb question, but are
you taking into account tone change rules? I ask this because it's the reason I kept messing up.










mirgcire -



Quote:

are you taking into account tone change rules?

Do you mean rule that one or more third tones preceding a third tone become second tones when
spoken? If so the answer is yes and no. Yes, I know the rules, no that was not the issue. This
issue is that I do not hear tones well enough to destinguish among them reliably - whether they
uttered as a single phoneme or as part of a sentence.

However some people in this thread claim that this is impossible. Appearently, if I just try
harder I will eventually hear them.

This might not be entirely false. I tried recording my voice using the built-in win XP sound
recorder. And amazingly I could hear hear the tone much better. I even tried singing. When I
played it back it sounded terrible, but when I recorded it sounded fine.

Why would playing it back through head phones make difference? I don't know but this does help me
to self correct when practicing on my own.












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