The 'sh' discrepancy...

Yeah, I see that now. Sorry. =/

I don't think that's what sparechange meant. I understood that he learns Chinese like he would like music - that is you have to pay attention to the tune, the sounds, the rythm, etc.

Am I right? If so, I think it is a great approach to language learning, not just tonal languages

Becareful learning through music. I don't know if it's just me, but the law of tones seems to be completely thrown out the window when people sing. Maybe a downside to speaking a tonal language?

There is a lot of good discussion here. I had no idea what this thread would become when I started it. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed!

Regarding proper pronunciation/tones...personally, I'm borrowing a lot from the approach I use when learning music. Even though I don't plan to perform the piece with robotic, emotionless precision; learning it that way at the beginning gives me much more control later on, and allows me to be much more expressive.

I try to be careful to avoid extremes, mostly by making sure it stays fun and interesting. But overall, I find being a bit of a perfectionist at the beginning gives me more satisfying results later on.

Oh, I agree, Canadians in high demand, and I must have heard 美式英语 and even 美语 a hundred times. I think Singaporeans are the only 华人

i've ever actually heard with a Queen's English accent.

i just meant to use that as an example of a 'standard', what used to be, the commonly accepted standard. Anyone who speaks standard British, Canadian, or American English well will be understood, but in you pick up a thick Appalachan or Boston accent mixed in with the inevitable foreigner accent it might be counter productive. In Chinese, where its actual dialects not just accents, I think its even more important to learn the standard.

Actually, up here in Harbin they prefer to learn "North American" English.

I don't know about the rest of the China, but Harbiners are SUPER picky about correct pronunciation. Many refuse to let a non-North American teach their children.

Maybe the "Queen's Engish" is on it's way out in Asia. (I know it's still the accent of choice in Europe, however.) =)

Wasn't this thread about rolling the tongue anyway? 卷舌 'sh' vs 's', etc.? What places have you run into this 'southern accent'? I was surprised when traveling around it seemed to be much more prevalent than the 'sh', including some places in NW and NE. I still think as foreigners it makes sense to learn "the Queen's English" and speak proper Mandarin. I'm not talking about working on a heavy Beijing R or anything, but rolling the tongue and clarifying our sh, zh, ch, sounds.

anyway, this is a cool thread, lots of good discussion on tones and sound variation. Thanks.

"Blue Sky"??? Damn, all this time I thought your name was Lazy Field, guess tones aren't everything (hehe). OK, actually I'm not an "anti," nor an "anti-anti" - I agree with Blue Sky in moderation, you can focus on tones too much. Sometimes when you have a certain level of tonal accuracy you need to back off a little. I like the native speakers who have to sing out the four tones and think about it when you ask them what tone it is, because they don't think of tones in the abstract as seperate from the sound. I also rarely hear a third tone that sounds like the long low swooping sound I was taught in isolation. In fact a 3rd oftern sounds 'shorter' than a fourth, but is clear if you relax into a 'Blue Sky happy place' and just try to recreate the sound in context. I'm generally at the point where I say it better when I don't have to answer "what tone is that," BUT, I do try to work on my tones, and know it is still a major weakness. I am resolved not to be the Laowai who says every sentance in a 242424242424 sing-song to emphasize the 'tones.'

People forget that English has tones. We just use them differently. Say "hello" using Mandarin's four tones. How does changing the tone (or intonation) change the meaning? When would you use the 2nd vs. the 4th?

What native English speakers (as well as others) aren't accustomed to is using the the tones on every syllable and in different combinations. That type of "mastery" comes only with time and practice.

Chinese figures as one of the easiest languages I've ever learnt. The 汉字 and then 成语 of 要努力. You have to work at your characters and set expressions (which are plentiful in Chinese). There is no short cut there. Tones, ... they make the language hard because we think of them as hard.

I pay attention to them, but I never went into over-drill. It's just too boring. And I have a friend who has no musical ear and just cannot hear tones. She was soooo scared to learn Chinese. But she speaks it, and speaks it well. She also learnt Thai, which is a tonal language as well, when she was a child. Just picked up the tones without actually being able to hear them. Now, you explain that to me!

"Realize that the anti and positive mold into one." Hmm, guess I haven't attained enlightenment yet.

Let's not go for moonlit walks with impressionable young Chinese women who look into your eyes adoringly as you spout gibberish on your way to the nearest teahouse, student art exhibit or massage parlor.

Instead, let's go to the corner tobaccionist. He's sitting in his shop fanning himself and wearing his wifebeater undershirt rolled up to expose his belly, and he's getting pretty darn impatient as you struggle to communicate your request. "My hovercraft is full of eels. Do you waaaaant ... do you waaaaaant ... to come back to my place, bouncy-bouncy?" Tones, schmones... you're communicating and you're not afraid to make mistakes!

Later, at the local 公安局, you suspect this won't end well...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6D1YI-41ao

Those leather-bound volumes of "Lantian Thought" are priceless and would not be sitting on my bookshelf in my house because I'd have them by my side constantly. Brilliantly elucidated as ever Lantian, 谢谢你!

ONE BOOK - tssk tssk aeflow, Realize that the anti and positive mold into one. Nobody has said (at least not I) that listeners are conspiring to not understand someone, or that what a learner-of-Chinese might be uttering is correct. In fact, it's true that what comes out is often incorrect. The issue is how one gets to being correct, how is it best to learn, and what are our current methods. The methods you have cited, for the most part, don't work for the majority of learners. IMO These are the same methods that make people think learning Mandarin is hard, impossible because of tones, inconceivable because of hanzi, or doomed due to age and genetics. I am "anti" all of this. No doubt. My Anti's are a struggle against the suppression of the masses, the Chinese-language in all of us yearning to be freeee. :) Now let me give you a brief comparison of the word-approach versus my lighter brighter approach. WORD-APPROACH I. Today we will learn colors. Say colors, ”yan2 se4", see this hanzi for colors, 颜色。It has 21 strokes in total. You won't ever learn to write it. Now repeat after me "yan2 se4". No not se2, se4! Okay, practice with me, ma1, ma2, ma3, m4! Oh you'll never get tones. Not yan4 si1. No not Yangzhe river. No no no. Now did you memorize your homework from last night, the 23 colors of ice cream? Say them to me, lanse/heise/baisi/fenhongsi/lvse/huangse/hagaandazz. You said 'fen' wrong, drop and do twenty. Tough love is good for you. 2. BLUE SKY APPROACH Okay, today we're going for a walk, and I want you to say to her, "你的蓝色眼睛好美，迷死我“*。 Notice that blue comes after saying the 'you', and before the main subject, her eyes. It's important to note how this subject comes at the beginning of the sentence. Now let's all practice, "ni de lan se yanjing hao mei, mi si wo." * Listen to me carefully as I say this. Don't forget the pause and slight dip after the yanjing, and rise with the hao mei. Say the 'mi si wo' like you mean it. No go out there and see if it works! :) *Your blue eyes are beautiful, your charm is gonna be the death of me!

Dare I ask, what does an "anti-word" stance entail? Just how many "antis" are there? :) There won't be anything left of the language by the time you're finished with it. We'll be reduced to grunting. :)

Slogans and policies in Chinese are often named numerically (eg, "The Three Represents"). So somehow I get this mental image of leatherbound volumes of Lantian Thought sitting on a bookshelf: "The Two Antis". Chinese with Lantian characteristics :)

It's true that native speakers of a language rarely speak like radio announcers. They occasionally slur their speech, relax their pronunciation or intonation, and other native speakers still easily understand them.

It's a big mistake for foreigners to think they can get away with this, though. Because when you "relax" your pronunciation, you instinctively do so according to the unwritten rules of your native language, not those of the language you're trying to speak. The result is often something incomprehensible.

If you listen to iMandarinPod.com podcasts, notice how the Chinese speakers pronounce "iMandarinPod". To my ears, it sounds like "Amanda Report". If it was spoken out of context, I wouldn't know what they were saying. Now ask yourself, what does your "anti-tone" Chinese sound like? It probably sounds fine to your ears, but that's not the point.

(I don't mean to criticize iMandarinPod or cause them to lose face, this is just for illustrative purposes. I like their podcasts a lot, for intermediate-level listening comprehension I haven't found anything better).

When someone who is not a professionally patient language teacher actually goes to the trouble of correcting you, it's almost always because you said something that sounded incomprehensible to them, or at least something that took the speaker a few seconds to figure out. If they understood you clearly despite a minor mistake or accent, they will rarely bother to interrupt the conversation to correct you, it's just too much trouble. So when someone actually does correct you, it's usually valuable feedback that you're pronouncing a particular word badly enough to make you misunderstood, and that's not something you should ignore.

If you speak Chinese and native speakers can't understand you, it's not them, it's you. They're not conspiring to pretend not to understand you (usually). it's not their fault. It's your fault.

If the language you're learning has a feature or a sound that your mother tongue doesn't, it very rarely "takes care of itself". You have to work at it.

For example, English has no noun genders. Countless times I've seen English speakers who speak, say, French quite fluently but constantly get genders mixed up. They never bothered to learn them, and they probably never will.

Some students never quite learn the ü sound. It exists in French, German and Mandarin, but not in English. Check out this Danwei "Sexy Beijing" video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jGJbyLyk0o . At around the 03:25 mark, she asks several women if they know what 女权主义 (feminism) means. They all reply no, and it's no wonder because instead of "nüquanzhuyi" she often says "nuquanzhuyi" or even "nuchuanzhuyi". Sometimes she seems to use fourth tone instead of third for her "nu" or fourth instead of second for "quan". And this is a fairly fluent speaker of Chinese, confident enough to walk up to people on the street and interview them.

Mind you, I think she's doing it on purpose, just to get a "no" answer out of them, to bolster the theory that feminism is out of style among the young women of Beijing.

Still, some of you anti-tone folks should ask yourselves if you, too, are walking around saying "nùchuànzhuyi". If so, you really shouldn't ignore the people who tell you you're saying it wrong.

I think context plays a huge part in Chinese, as well as other languages. There are definitely a lot of things to consider aside from tones alone. =)

TWO SIDES TO A COIN - It's hard for me to sit here and guess-ta-mate your friend's ability levels. Length of time in China is a realllly poor metric for Chinese-language ability, there are just too many factors affecting one's learning.

I would also say that they are wrong though if they are saying just "speaking fast" works. If what they mean is saying phrases that are common, and at natural speed, then sure.

Just saying "zhu" rou in isolation, or ziioirhereit"zhu rou"dldkitkhe wouldn't work well either, both would return puzzled looks.

It's probably right that they weren't well understood, but what were they ordering? Was it something the waitress was unfamiliar with or was it their tones? I have also seen plenty of times Chinese speakers having to repeat things to waitresses, repeating many times. Do I jump to a conclusion that it is my Chinese friend's poor tones?

In contrast to tones, I think context has a much bigger affect in Chinese situations. And who knows, maybe it's just that you've been paying more attention to how you say things and your pronunciation that's made your Chinese better! :)

Good theory / idea. I definitely think there's a lot of truth to that. However...

I was at a restaurant with some buddies a month or so back. Two of my friends there at the restaurant have been in China for a long time. Neither of them have studied tones in isolation. Their theory: speak fast enough and the tones take care of themselves.

When the 服务员 came around to take our order both of them had to repeat themselves a number of times to get their ideas across. I, being the only one who has studied tones in isolation, and continues to due so, was the only one that didn't get have to repeat myself and was understood on the first go.

I've been in lots of situations like this.

Personally, I'm a tone nazi. I think speaking with accurate tones (and using tones in their proper combinations accurately) is what makes or break the 洋腔洋调.

To further bolster Lantians position:

Never believe those tone-fetishists who tell you that even a slight initial neglect of tones will haunt you for the rest of your life, that you shouldn't speak before mastering the tones *perfectly*, or that "unlearning mistakes" is a quest of almost impossible proportions. Rubbish! If that all were true I should have given up on the language years ago.

Of course you need to constantly try and practice. And of course you should try to pay attention to tones early on.

But practice by actually speaking in Chinese with Chinese. You will see when you are understood and when not. And you will get better over time. Even if your tongue is a numb rock as it is in my case. I am still way from being good. But there is progress. People actually understand me now.

ANTI-TONE: I think that Chinese-as-a-second language education places too much initial emphasis on tones in isolation. I think I can safely say that at the get go I could say "ma" with the four tones w/o any problems. But once into a real sentence, a real spoken utterance, well then lots of problems came up.

I guess it's also part of my "anti-word" stance too. Chinese people (and others) love to correct certain "words," it's part of the focus on words in isolation.

The tricky part about tones and words and pronunciation is that they vary...by milliseconds...in different contexts, word-pairings and mood.

So in general I turn a deaf ear when people correct my tones or start criticizing others about their tones.

I think our ears and mouths gradually learn to hear and speak the proper sounds, as long as we pay attention. Focusing on tones in isolation to me, ignores too many other things that make for "speaking right." :)

Interesting insights.

Question: how can you be "anti-tones"?

tabifu,

I'm usually pretty anti-tones, but in that tongue twister, it's the tones that create the distinction, and which are much harder for us to pick up, but very clear to a Chinese ear.

I have had people say back to me the "si" with a heavy emphasis on the tone, rather than the "sh", and it took me a while to realize that it was absolutely clear to people that way. (the verb 是 being very clear also because of it's placement in the sentence)

四是四 444

十是十 242

si bu si ?

Hi Amber,

To quote Pinker (The Language Instinct: chp The Tower of Babel, pg 245 1994)

A simple example is the word orange. Originally it was norange, borrowed from the Spanish naranja. But at some point some unknown creative speaker must have reanalyzed 'a norange' as 'an orange'.

Though the speaker's and hearer's analyses specify identical sounds for that particular phrase, anorange, once the hearer uses the rest of grammar creatively, the change becomes audible, as in 'those oranges" rather than "those noranges.

(This particular change has been common in English...Nowadays people talk about "a whole nother thing", and I know of a child who eats "ectarines" and an adult called Nalice who refers to people she doesn't care for as "nidiots.")

The friends I have who moved down here to Zhejiang from the north like to tease the locals, wondering out loud how the famous tongue twister, "四是四，十是十..." can possibly be understood coming from a local's mouth.

Oh yes - and then there is k and h confusion. I have a friend who insists that to drink is ke, and that a meeting is kui!

As for the sh /s thing. It just makes the redundancy of chinese sounds even worse. There are already tons of shi sounds - in the South they are confused with the s sounds too. Same problem with n and l. Well, it certainly isn't an easy language for us.

As said above, it seems to me that the tones (and vowels of course) and much more important than the consonant sound to Chinese ears.

Amber

I have noticed exactly the same thing! I think it accounts for the fact that the number 8 is lucky! How could an English speaker think fa and ba were alike!

It also seems to be embedded in the character phonetic components who seem to change consonant more often than vowel from character to character.

Not long after I got to XinJiang a friend from Hubei asked me "你喜欢吃狼吗?", took me a little while to figure out she meant, "你喜欢吃馕吗?".

One thing I can say is after being in the north, where there is usually a distinct difference between sh and s, then coming here to Guangzhou; it helps your tones!

I have also started exchanging h for f in taxis as many drivers in Guangzhuo are from Fulan.

The dialects are part of what makes china interesting, and like all languages are an important thing to learn to deal with. It would seem that "standard"普通话, just like "standard" English, is not very 普通 at all.

I have new news to report on the sh situation. My 阅读 teacher not only has the sh and s switch but she adds a fake beijing r accent to go with it. So it is so strange to hear because I know she is forcing the r sound to sound more professional but still, correct your sh to s problem first.

Some of the students were really confused by it but I was used to it. I have had teachers who are the same before. I just don't understand why.

aeflow,

that's a pretty accurate description, Only I am not at all convinced that "xia" changes to "sa" as he says. I will listen out for it.

Sometimes when you travel on long-distances busses around here you are treated to a viewing of old Charlie Chaplin videos in which he speaks Sichuan hua. I love those!

This topic rings true to my current situation as well. I am studying with a teacher who is adamant in pronouncing words in proper biao1 zhun3 mandarin. She has been trained to teach mandarin in Beijing schools. She will admonish the class dramatically when we do not speak correctly. Luckily, I have able to adapt to the straight and narrow path she has defined for us, knowing well that other academics might defiantly disagree. As I have been exposed to speech patterns from Shanghai, Taiwan and elsewhere, of course I am confounded by my choices. My best solution is to learn both Northern and Southern style pronunciations and hope that I can apply them as the situation demands. I feel that the "southern" dialect mandarin is a bit softer and more pleasing to my ear. The "sh" sounds better than soft "s", etc. But what do I know? "Wo3 jiu3 shi4 ben3 dan1 de wai4 guo2 ren3".

Si Yao

Lastly, since I am a native New Yorker, I can turn on the local accent when I'm back home and with friends and relatives. But when I'm here on the West coast, I only use my New York accent when with other native NY'ers or some one asks me to talk New York style.

AZERDocMom, - The 'x' wasn't really a problem, it was mainly the 'sh' that sounded different. Like you (and others) said, it sounded more like a soft 's'.

wildyaks - That actually translates very well to my situation. I live in southern Missouri, and I have to relax my English pronunciation a little if I don't want to sound like a snob to the locals.

tianfeng - I work with a Chinese woman who switches 'l' to 'n', and it comes through to her English. "Actually" routinely comes out as "Actuany".

amber - That is very interesting. Maybe that's why this Chinese dialect thing seems so very intimidating to me. It only takes a little adjustment to understand most variations in English, since they apply mostly to vowel sounds. Chinese, on the other hand, can change consonants, vowels, and tones. 哎哟！

Here's an article on Chengu dialect that describes some phonetic changes:

http://chengdoo.com/chengdu/index.php?page=news&news=1181099995&action=more&title=Chengdu+Dialect

I have no personal experience of the dialect myself, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of this description.

OK, has anyone else noticed something I have though... which is: the variations that take place within English speakers' accents usually occur with the vowel sounds (case in point: about vs. aboot; get vs. git; been vs. bin, no vs. noi etc.), whereas in Chinese, it seems to be the consonant sounds that vary with accent. I find this so interesting.

Up here in Harbin we say that people who speak like that have a 大舌头 (big tongue).

老师, for example, generally comes out lao3si1

I suppose this is not at all unlike variation in English. Just the other day, I was noticing that many Brits and Scots do not always pronounce "explosive" t's that are in the middle or end of words.

For example, in the U.S. we'd enunciate the t in "Stop it!", but in England, it's common to hear, "Stop ii!" where the "it" is sort of a fourth tone, short i sound :)

well you might as well add the N and L substitutions to this conversation. My ex gf always used to say 我佬子一片迷茫 instead of 脑子。 I used to bug her about having an old man live in her head that was always making her not understand things clearly. Maybe he was smoking opium.

sparechange,

it helps understanding if you use the same sounds they do. They do understand standard Mandarin, no problem. But one sounds awfully sophisticated (if not snobish) when speaking it in certain settings. I had to relearn a lot of my language when I got into actually working with people in order to understand them and be understood.

sparechange

I consider myself sort of a native Mandarin speaker (born in Taiwan) and from off the top of my head, my thought is that words that begin with "x" cannot be replaced by "sh" and have the same meaning or remain the same word. (Perhaps I am misunderstanding your question?) As wildyaks says, it's ch for c, she for s, and zh for z; I believe this is a regional differences. Taiwan Mandarin routinely substitute a soft "s" for a thick "sh", a soft z for zh, etc.

Southerners seem to speak a lot faster to my ears than northerners. I've always wondered if it has something to do with dropping those hs.

Seriously.

Cool...thanks johnb.

Thanks, wildyaks, that clears up a lot. Do the natives have any problem understanding you if you pronounce said consonants 'correctly'?

People in Shanghai, and much of south China do the same thing. Once you hear it enough, you don't even really notice it anymore.

Welcome to Sichuan! I'd say. I have studied Mandarin in Sichuan and now live and work here. When I study Cpod lessons I subconciously substitute the sh with s and the zh with z and the ch with c. That's the way we talk here. And Sichuanese whose Mandarin may be pretty good, still mix up those sounds a lot. Even in public settings. For example there is a street in Chengdu called 芳草街。 We all duly call it "fancaojie". But the people who put the pinyin under it, maybe aware of Sichuanese using far too many c when there should be a ch, wrote "Fanchaojie". It's meanwhile been replaced. But I found it funny.

When I started learning most of my teachers had really good putonghua. But one, she was a replacement teacher, was really hopeless, constantly mixing up those sounds - which is no problem after a few years. But for beginners it makes the learning experience really difficult. Sichuanese also have their own tonal system and it took me a while to figure out that I gave the wrong tones to my own name, because said teacher had taught me wrong...