Need advice on pronunciation

pgoodman
 October 03, 2008, 04:40 PM posted in General Discussion

My wife and I have been studying Chinese casually for a couple of years now and I have been using Chinese Pod for almost a year.  It is very slow going, but I plan on keeping at it. 

I liked the elementary lesson, "The Panda's Secret Wish" and worked on it for the last week until I could say it to a Chinese co-worker.  The roughest spots were that she could not understand "yuan" of "yuan wang" (wish) and "cai" of "cai se" (color).  It was extremely frustrating as I tried to repeat each of these from her corrections but never got them right.  I cannot understand from her explanations what I am doing incorrectly.  The "yuan" seems to be the oo sound and not the inflection, which I'm pretty sure I'm getting right.  The "cai" she says sounds too much like "zai".  I am thinking "ts" and it sounds to me like I'm softer than "dz" but obviously I'm not getting it.

Any specific help on pronouncing these two words would be much appreciated and if there are resources for just getting better at pronouncing words, I would also appreciate that.

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andrew_c
 October 03, 2008, 05:02 PM

I wouldn't dwell on one person's pronunciation so much.  A lot of Chinese people, in real life,  have bad pronunciation.

Here's one resource:

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xiaohu
 October 03, 2008, 06:38 PM

andrew_c

Sorry to say, that's a cop-out.  Chinese people don't mix up, "C" & "Z", and besides, the better one sounds in the target language, the better one can be understood, therefore facilitating smoother communication.

pgoodman

I'm actually in the process of putting together an accent reduction group, for those who want to make their pronunciation as clean and natural as possible.  I'll notify you when it's live.  In the meantime if you have any specific questions I can help you with, e-mail me at: xiaohucai@gmail.com

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pgoodman
 October 04, 2008, 04:21 PM

Thanks, I read some on line and practiced getting my tongue flatter on the "cai" and it went better when I talked with my other friend.  I think I did a lot better on the "yuan" by making it sort of two syllables (you-on) rolled into one.  I understand and appreciate Andrew's comment on accents and I am such a long way from ever thinking about accents.  Xiaohu's point is very correct though because it seems completely misunderstood if you can't separate "cai" from "zai" and "yuan" from "yun".

I'm pressing on.