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Nyxelestia (nyxelestia) wrote in linguaphiles,
2013-03-19 06:19:00

Help with Chinese phonology?

Hey, everyone! Guess who's going to try and teach herself Chinese again?

I've found that one of my biggest struggles in learning Chinese - besides some syntactical stuff - is that sounds. I'm extremely un-music-oriented and practically tone deaf (mostly in the layman's definition, though differentiating pitch/notes/etc is often a struggle for me) which makes Chinese tones difficult for me to grasp, and piling the kind of ridiculous vowel combinations and consonant variations, and, well... *keels over*

So, any advice on how to get a better grasp on the sounds of Chinese? Particularly in learning how to hear tones in speech and learning how to grasp the often minute differences between consonants?

Please and thank you! :)
Tags: chinese, mandarin, phonetics, phonology, pronunciation
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  • 26 comments

musa_nocturna

March 19 2013, 13:47:52 UTC 2 months ago

Listen and mimic, listen and mimic, and then listen and mimic some more. :) Most of us get stuck on 2nd tone because "Up? How do I do that?" It works a lot better the less I think about it when trying to pronounce it. (and in trying to not think about it, guess what happens? :D) I recognise 4th tone because it "feels" short and final, even when it's same length as the others.

For the j q x, ch zh sh, and z c s sounds, although teachers (and books) tend to want to bunch them together to teach the differences by comparing them, what worked for me was to pick one and focus on just that one until I felt I had it figured out. Being able to make the sound is the key to recognising it.

Personal favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9Ayvjy-Dgs Song, about 6 mins. Cute as heck.

muckefuck

March 19 2013, 14:29:07 UTC 2 months ago

Learning lexical tones has nothing whatever to do with musical ability. Think about it--this is a language which has to be spoken by everybody in its country of origin. You already hear and use all four tones when you speak English, you just don't aren't aware of it.

First tone: Mom... (Just thinking of you.)
Second tone: Mom? (Are you there?)
Third tone: Mohhhhhm (C'mon, I really really want it!)
Fourth tone: Mom! (I need you right now!)

laudre

March 19 2013, 15:53:14 UTC 2 months ago

This is pretty much what I would have said.

We already use tone semantically in English, after all. It's just taking that same principle and extending it to having a lexical function.

pgdudda

March 19 2013, 22:40:17 UTC 2 months ago

This. And lots of practice. It helps that the z/c/s j/q/x and zh/ch/sh sets are in complementary distribution with respect to surface vowels (the underlying vowels are a different matter, and vary in number from 2 to 6 depending on whose analysis you believe).

nyxelestia

March 20 2013, 00:30:19 UTC 2 months ago

complementary distribution with respect to surface vowels (the underlying vowels are a different matter, and vary in number from 2 to 6 depending on whose analysis you believe)

I'm not going to lie, I have no idea what you mean here.

muckefuck

March 20 2013, 01:03:34 UTC 2 months ago Edited:  March 20 2013, 01:04:34 UTC

"Complementary distribution" means that they never occur in the same phonetic environment. "Dark" (i.e. velarised) l and "light" l are said to be in complementary distribution in American English because the former is found only in syllable codas and the latter only in onsets. That is, in the word lilt, the first l is light and the second dark. Compare this to, say, Russian, where both dark and light l can occur in any position.

So it is with the Mandarin consonants pgdudda just listed off. The palatal series j/q/x occurs only before the vowel [i] or the glide [j] whereas the alveolar series z/c/s and the retroflex series zh/ch/sh never do. That is, you have xian but never *sian or *shian. Pinyin romansiation obscures this somewhat by using i to represent some very different-sounding vowels. For comparison, Wade-Giles would have hsi, shih, ssŭ where Pinyin has xi, shi, si. The Wade-Giles convention is clearer from a phonetic point of view, but from a phonological one it's overkill.

nyxelestia

March 20 2013, 09:12:54 UTC 2 months ago

I have been sitting here for five minutes saying lilt, but the two l's sound exactly the same to me. D:

muckefuck

March 20 2013, 12:49:35 UTC 2 months ago

Pay attention to where your tongue is when you make each sound. You should feel the tip right behind your front teeth when you make the first l, then pulling back so that the back of the tongue is almost at the back of your mouth for the second one. If it helps, put the tip of a finger right behind your upper teeth. There should be plenty of room to do this with a dark l, but it will get in the way when you try to do a clear one.

If they both feel as well as sound exactly the same to you, then perhaps you speak one of the accents of English that allows velarisation in all positions. I rather doubt that, however.

nyxelestia

March 21 2013, 11:22:37 UTC 2 months ago

Okay, so my tongue does move, but it doesn't go to the back of my mouth for the second l, it just drops down a little bit, and they do still sound mostly the same (and they both sound, un-velarized to me, rather than being both velarized).

Are there any other letters that might be considered velarized/unvelarized in English? Maybe the ls are just a byproduct of my accent or something, and a different comparison will be clearer for me.

agentcthulhu

March 21 2013, 14:21:28 UTC 2 months ago

T/k and d/g? T, d, l (light) all start above teeth and have a sticking/flicking sound. K, d, l (dark) start at the throat, has an "uh" sound and the tongue does not stick/flick at the start.

muckefuck

March 21 2013, 14:56:57 UTC 2 months ago

The exact distinction isn't important to understanding the concept. /h/ and /ŋ/ are also in complementary distribution in English (outside of a few Hiberno-English varieties which allow final [h]).

tenou_k

March 22 2013, 02:07:47 UTC 2 months ago

Check this page out.

muckefuck

2 months ago

  • New comment

pgdudda

March 20 2013, 01:14:57 UTC 2 months ago

The most obvious example to American ears are the differences in the different "i" sounds of si, xi, and shi. Secretly, the are all the same phonemic vowel, but the preceding consonant changes the sound of each quite dramatically. That difference in vowel quality is useful for identifying the preceding consonant.

agentcthulhu

March 21 2013, 13:55:50 UTC 2 months ago

I've never thought about this but you're absolutely right.

nyxelestia

March 20 2013, 00:28:25 UTC 2 months ago Edited:  March 20 2013, 00:29:21 UTC

See, that's the thing - I have to stop and figure out those tones because if I don't, they all sound the same to me (and they all make me go "see, this is why I'm never having kids" :P). And while I can stop and figure out the differences, it's only easy when they are single words on their own - trying to do the same for a string of words in a sentence is a nightmare, but right now it's kind of the only method I have.

muckefuck

March 20 2013, 00:52:11 UTC 2 months ago

I don't know if it makes it easier to worse to know that not all words in a typical sentence carry their full lexical tone. Some syllables are normally "toneless" (i.e. their tone contour is determined by the tone of the preceding syllable) even in their citation forms. In colloquial speech, even more syllables become "toneless". Until you start to learn which lexical tones are absolutely vital to comprehension and which can be safely ignored, it's best to pronounce them all. But this might help you to understand why the tones don't always sound the same in conversation as they do in isolation.

agentcthulhu

March 20 2013, 17:00:54 UTC 2 months ago

Hello, fancy seeing you here! *waves*

You know how sometimes when your mouth is full, you can point at what you want and hum what you want to say and people will understand?

Okay, maybe it doesn't work for you, but try to hum a Chinese phrase. Start with something short, something two or three words long that you can already pronounce but have trouble getting the tones right. Forget about tones and stuff, just hum the phrase and try to get it as close you can to your model. Pretend you're playing copycat, trying to piss off your parents or your friends by copying exactly how they're saying it. When you have it down, say it with the right pronunciations and the tone you just copied.

Or, you can get a bag of animal crackers and use meowing/nyaing instead of humming. Give yourself a kitty cracker when you get the meowing right. What. >_>

nyxelestia

March 21 2013, 11:23:31 UTC 2 months ago

I'm tempted to try the animal cracker one, for associations purposes if nothing else. :)

agentcthulhu

March 21 2013, 14:23:28 UTC 2 months ago

Believe you me, I was highly tempted to do so when I considered learning Vietnamese <_<;;

akibare

March 20 2013, 16:02:03 UTC 2 months ago

I love this example! Filing it away for future reference...

muckefuck

March 20 2013, 16:38:26 UTC 2 months ago

Sadly it's not as well-formulated as the half-remembered one it's based on.

agentcthulhu

March 20 2013, 16:38:40 UTC 2 months ago

For first tone, I'd suggest something like the "la" in "lalala~ I can't hear you!" Second and forth tones examples are excellent.

evilstorm

March 20 2013, 06:28:19 UTC 2 months ago

Can you pick them out at all when listening to someone else say them? I was going to suggest, get a program like Audacity and record yourself saying ā/á/ǎ/à. Then play it back and compare to a native speaker saying'em (examples easily found on Youtube). Correct yourself, rinse and repeat. If you can manage that, it is honestly a matter of rote. You cannot repeat that step too many times, just keep going until you've got it. Then move up to saying two-word phrases (e.g. 大包, a very important one to know) and learning how the tones feel when strung together like that.

agentcthulhu

March 20 2013, 16:42:00 UTC 2 months ago

I don't think you need to master all four tones first. I think you can move on to two-word phrases as soon as you can tell the difference between the two tones.

nyxelestia

March 21 2013, 11:25:24 UTC 2 months ago

Trying to listen for the tones in someone else's speech is even worse than trying to say them myself. *hides under bed*