For a good first to fourth tone transition, you're required to start with a rock steady first tone. To do this, spend a bit of time to find "your" first tone pitch. How high or low it is depends entirely on your voice and tonal comfort range. A good base first tone is one where you can easily move two notes (steps/levels, if you prefer) up and two down, without straining your voice.
Once you've established your base first tone, practice a clear, confident first tone that does not waiver or falter. I'd liken it to walking in a straight line/on a balance beam, but that's too slow, and implies too much effort. Your first tone is clear and effortless, so imagine you are floating down a river, being carried along by a brisk current in a smooth, tranquil river.
To go from this steady clear first tone to fourth tone, imagine you're gliding down the river, only to suddenly be carried off the edge by the waterfall, landing into the pool "two steps" below.
The trick is the making the pivotal point where you transition from first to fourth as much like a 90 degree angle as possible. You have to totally shift gears and drop like a stone from a clear, melodic sing-song first tone with no hesitation whatsoever.
Some first to fourth combinations to practice are:
bing1kuai4 冰塊 (icecube)
gao1xing4 高興 (happy)
fa1xian4 發現 (discover)
gong1zuo4 工作 (work)
yin1yue4 音樂 (music)
ba1gua4 八卦 (gossip)
sheng1ri4 生日 (birthday)
Also practice 4 - 1 - 4 combinations, where you have to fall swiftly and emphatically from your first tone to fourth, then you have to JUMP UP again to first, only to fall right back down to fourth. The most important aspect of this combination is the jump up to first. If there is even the slightest hint of an upward climb (slide, veer, amble, digression...), you've suddenly made your first tone into second.
So visualize: Falling down - jumping up (like you're Superman, or the superhero of your choice, leaping effortlessly to the top of a building) - then gliding along effortlessly in the river of first tone, only to and fall down again into the cool waterfall!
Some 4 - 1 - 4 AND 1 - 4 - 1 combinations to practise are:
Ni3 yao4 chi1 dan4bing3 ma? 你要吃蛋餅嗎? Do you want to eat danbing?
Yi4 bei1 dou4jiang3 一杯豆漿 a glass of soy milk?
Fei1lv4bin1 菲律賓 The Philippines
Wo3 dui4 ba1gua4 hen3 you3 xing4qu4 我對八卦很有興趣. I'm very interested in gossip.
Wo3 dui4 peng1ren4 hen3 you3 xing4qu4 我對烹飪很有興趣. I'm very interested in cooking.
Try taping yourself and listening with a critical ear. Also, if possible, have a native speaker critique your tones. Repeat until he/she is satisfied with how you're saying times (this could take 5 times or 25 or 50 times - but if you have someone patient enough listen to and correct you, take advantage of this opportunity!!)
Good Luck! 加油!!!
Showing posts with label tone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tone. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Mastering Tone - 4th to 2nd Combinations
Certain tone combinations seem harder than others for beginners to get a handle on, some of which are more surprising than others. I would have thought that 4th to 2nd would be pretty much an open and shut case, but it's proved to be a challenging combination for my student to (consistently) master.
The problem doesn't seem to be with the 4th tone syllable, which is swift, emphatic, and drops enough in pitch, but rather with his inability to start his ascent from the precise point where his 4th tone ends.
If this sounds like your problem too, try visualizing this scenerio:
Imagine that you are diving into a pool. A perfect dive (like the picture on the right) where your voice falls in pitch as quickly and effortlessly as your body would cut through the water.
You must touch the bottom of the pool. Only after you have touch the bottom do you turn, crouch, and then push yourself up.
Now,let your second tone rise, as effortlessly as your body would seamlessly be propelled to the surface of the water.
Some 4th - 2nd tone combinations to practice are:
wen4ti2 (問題problem)
lu4cha2 (綠茶green tea)
fa4guo2 (法國France)
Yin4ni2 (印尼Indonesia)
Tai4guo2 (泰國Thailand)
Yue4nan2 (越南Vietnam)
da4ren4 (大人adult)
er4shi2 (二十twenty)
The problem doesn't seem to be with the 4th tone syllable, which is swift, emphatic, and drops enough in pitch, but rather with his inability to start his ascent from the precise point where his 4th tone ends.
If this sounds like your problem too, try visualizing this scenerio:
Imagine that you are diving into a pool. A perfect dive (like the picture on the right) where your voice falls in pitch as quickly and effortlessly as your body would cut through the water.
You must touch the bottom of the pool. Only after you have touch the bottom do you turn, crouch, and then push yourself up.
Now,let your second tone rise, as effortlessly as your body would seamlessly be propelled to the surface of the water.
Some 4th - 2nd tone combinations to practice are:
wen4ti2 (問題problem)
lu4cha2 (綠茶green tea)
fa4guo2 (法國France)
Yin4ni2 (印尼Indonesia)
Tai4guo2 (泰國Thailand)
Yue4nan2 (越南Vietnam)
da4ren4 (大人adult)
er4shi2 (二十twenty)
Sunday, August 9, 2009
No Sleeping in the Dumpling Shop! (A.K.A. The Importance of Tone)
"Ooooohhhh," my friend groaned after indulging in a feast of yummy (but filling!) dumplings, "Shuijiao make me shuijiao" he drawled, rolling on the couch.
Note:
Dumplings = 水餃 = shui3 jiao3
Sleep = 睡覺 = shui4 jiao4
We all laughed along with him. A few months before, he had railed against the shop owner who hadn't understood his request for dumplings. He conceded that his tones might have been a bit off, but, "I was in a dumpling shop!! I mean, come on! Did they really think I was saying that I wanted to sleep??"
I've thought about this for many years now and I've concluded that this is precisely what they thought in the first minute after he spoke. After all, it's what he announced upon coming into their shop, and it seems to me that the function of language is to avoid/minimize the need for second guessing. We naturally accept what someone says at face value, even if it doesn't make sense, before resorting to considering other options, which is more work.
In my own life, as an ESL teacher, I often am confronted with sentences that don't make sense, all because of a slight pronunciation error. For example, many native Chinese speakers have trouble with English vowel sounds, in particular distinguishing (or seeing the need to distinguish) long from short vowels.
After a decade of being perplexed at least once a class by mispronunciation, I know for a fact that I as a native speaker take a sentence at face value before considering other alternatives, and I'm inclined to think that most people do the same.
The best example I have is the time when I asked my class what they did over the weekend. After throwing the question out to my group, I looked expectantly at the first student in the row of desks strung out in a half circle around the room, a pretty, unassuming girl with a nice smile.
"Bitch," she promptly answered.
"Pardon me?" I said, slightly taken aback.
"Bitch," she repeated, before helpfully adding with a smile, "I yesterday go to bitch."
"Oh, beach! You went to the beeeeeeeeach" I said, relieved I wasn't being cursed at.
"Yes, beeeitch, I went to the beeeeeeitch" she repeated, making a slightly modified yet still incorrect stab at the word in question.
We spent the next 20 minutes practising "bitch" vs. "beach" along with a bunch of other examples, "hit/heat", "rip/reap", etc. Judging from a few of their expressions, I'm sure many of them thought I was nit-picking. Surely, they must have been saying to themselves, such a small difference in pronunciation wouldn't make a big difference.
But it did, because when I hear a sentence that doesn't make sense, I don't immediately come up with a mental list of possible substitutions for the word in question. I think I'm predisposed to give whatever they're saying a shot, more than to substitute vowel sounds and think of other more likely words that would better fit their sentence. That comes a minute later, when it's clear we are miscommunicating. But in the first moment, I believe what I'm hearing. Hence, I thought Sandy was calling me a bitch.
Likewise, I think that the folks in the dumpling restaurant thought my friend had wandered into the wrong place. Maybe he had mistaken their shop for a hotel, maybe he was just a bit odd and said random things to people. I'm sure that with a minute or two of gestures and pointing, they understood that he did indeed want to eat dumplings and not sleep, but in the first minute, they heard sleep.
Tone is something most native English speakers must battle to understand the importance of, because we don't have it, but before raging against the native speaker that "refuses" to understand you, I ask you to play the long/short vowel game in English and see how well you do, i.e:
"Tap/tape the table.", "I need a mat/mate.", "Wrap/rape the flowers please." And on and on...
The bottom line is:
Don't underestimate the all importance of tone. (Or you might be getting directions to the nearest hotel instead of your dinner!)
Note:
Dumplings = 水餃 = shui3 jiao3
Sleep = 睡覺 = shui4 jiao4
We all laughed along with him. A few months before, he had railed against the shop owner who hadn't understood his request for dumplings. He conceded that his tones might have been a bit off, but, "I was in a dumpling shop!! I mean, come on! Did they really think I was saying that I wanted to sleep??"
I've thought about this for many years now and I've concluded that this is precisely what they thought in the first minute after he spoke. After all, it's what he announced upon coming into their shop, and it seems to me that the function of language is to avoid/minimize the need for second guessing. We naturally accept what someone says at face value, even if it doesn't make sense, before resorting to considering other options, which is more work.
In my own life, as an ESL teacher, I often am confronted with sentences that don't make sense, all because of a slight pronunciation error. For example, many native Chinese speakers have trouble with English vowel sounds, in particular distinguishing (or seeing the need to distinguish) long from short vowels.
After a decade of being perplexed at least once a class by mispronunciation, I know for a fact that I as a native speaker take a sentence at face value before considering other alternatives, and I'm inclined to think that most people do the same.
The best example I have is the time when I asked my class what they did over the weekend. After throwing the question out to my group, I looked expectantly at the first student in the row of desks strung out in a half circle around the room, a pretty, unassuming girl with a nice smile.
"Bitch," she promptly answered.
"Pardon me?" I said, slightly taken aback.
"Bitch," she repeated, before helpfully adding with a smile, "I yesterday go to bitch."
"Oh, beach! You went to the beeeeeeeeach" I said, relieved I wasn't being cursed at.
"Yes, beeeitch, I went to the beeeeeeitch" she repeated, making a slightly modified yet still incorrect stab at the word in question.
We spent the next 20 minutes practising "bitch" vs. "beach" along with a bunch of other examples, "hit/heat", "rip/reap", etc. Judging from a few of their expressions, I'm sure many of them thought I was nit-picking. Surely, they must have been saying to themselves, such a small difference in pronunciation wouldn't make a big difference.
But it did, because when I hear a sentence that doesn't make sense, I don't immediately come up with a mental list of possible substitutions for the word in question. I think I'm predisposed to give whatever they're saying a shot, more than to substitute vowel sounds and think of other more likely words that would better fit their sentence. That comes a minute later, when it's clear we are miscommunicating. But in the first moment, I believe what I'm hearing. Hence, I thought Sandy was calling me a bitch.
Likewise, I think that the folks in the dumpling restaurant thought my friend had wandered into the wrong place. Maybe he had mistaken their shop for a hotel, maybe he was just a bit odd and said random things to people. I'm sure that with a minute or two of gestures and pointing, they understood that he did indeed want to eat dumplings and not sleep, but in the first minute, they heard sleep.
Tone is something most native English speakers must battle to understand the importance of, because we don't have it, but before raging against the native speaker that "refuses" to understand you, I ask you to play the long/short vowel game in English and see how well you do, i.e:
"Tap/tape the table.", "I need a mat/mate.", "Wrap/rape the flowers please." And on and on...
The bottom line is:
Don't underestimate the all importance of tone. (Or you might be getting directions to the nearest hotel instead of your dinner!)
Tone - Starting on the right foot
While there are many advantages to being self taught, one of the disadvantages is that the learner tends to pick and choose what's important to him/her. In my case,I decided that learning tones per se really didn't matter that much - as long as I mimicked what I heard acurately.
That was not a good idea.
It's way way WAY better to learn your tones as you go, and to be (or rather, have your teacher/native speaker friend be) vigilant about your pronunciation. I had to spend a lot of time learning tones and how to speak correctly long after I started studying, and I can tell you that it's not the way to go.
I managed to improve my tones (thus elevating my Chinese) after the fact with lots of practice and constant repetition. It was work, it's still work, but it's worth it. I spend a lot of time listening and repeating. I listen and repeat the dialogues from my book, Very Practical Chinese while I'm doing housework. I listen and repeat Youtube clips. I also started writing out paragraphs (once I had finished the dialogues) to make sure I knew the proper pinyin/tone for each character. I learned the hard way that mimicking a native speaker is important, but knowing the tones that you're trying to mimick is of vital importance; otherwise, there's a strong likelihood that when you try to "mix and match" your sentences, you'll screw your tones up. Remember... (this is your mantra!) Tone Is Everything. (well, almost everything!)
That was not a good idea.
It's way way WAY better to learn your tones as you go, and to be (or rather, have your teacher/native speaker friend be) vigilant about your pronunciation. I had to spend a lot of time learning tones and how to speak correctly long after I started studying, and I can tell you that it's not the way to go.
I managed to improve my tones (thus elevating my Chinese) after the fact with lots of practice and constant repetition. It was work, it's still work, but it's worth it. I spend a lot of time listening and repeating. I listen and repeat the dialogues from my book, Very Practical Chinese while I'm doing housework. I listen and repeat Youtube clips. I also started writing out paragraphs (once I had finished the dialogues) to make sure I knew the proper pinyin/tone for each character. I learned the hard way that mimicking a native speaker is important, but knowing the tones that you're trying to mimick is of vital importance; otherwise, there's a strong likelihood that when you try to "mix and match" your sentences, you'll screw your tones up. Remember... (this is your mantra!) Tone Is Everything. (well, almost everything!)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)