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| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 57 of 160 08 August 2009 at 6:27am | IP Logged |
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So I recorded the short clip I said I would do for Chinese in order to get pointers on
my reading before trying to record anything else (not sure if I'll record materials yet as I get nervous and sloppy on camera/microphone - just wanted to get opinions in case I do end up doing so). Well. I listened to it a couple times to try and figure out what to do about the volume, and I have realized that: 1) I sound vaguely like my cousin. But while her voice fits her serene, gentle personality perfectly, I tend to be an abrupt, snappy sort of a person, so it's strange for me to hear my voice sounding so soft. 2) I sound like a twelve year old. Ah well. Let's say it's my inner child. 3) I speak much more clearly in Chinese than in English, and I speak much more slowly when recording than when chatting. 4) I occasionally have a hard time guessing how to modulate my rhythm. I think this skill is part experience/comprehension of the text and part simply language - intonation is something that must be learned as well as discovered. I generally get by, but when reading literature out loud, I am not always confident about where I am pausing in complex sentences. I hope that some kind native speaker will give me some advice when I post this clip, probably tomorrow! Edited by bouda on 08 August 2009 at 6:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5729 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian | Message 58 of 160 08 August 2009 at 7:25am | IP Logged |
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Hey there again.
I see you've started to use Anki. One thing you may want to consider when using Anki (or any SRS programs) is including the sentence as well as the word. It will help you remember the word in context. It may be slow if you actually have to type the sentence, but if you are reading a news site or blog, you can just copy the sentence into Anki and highlight the new word. That's what I do with Russian. Of course, maybe you are doing this already - in that case, just ignore this post and hope it will be useful to other passers-by! Is ghayn the most difficult letter for you? One thing that might help is seeing it as a voiced version of khaa'. Try saying ka, ga, kha, gha, perhaps. Or if you're familiar with French or German you can pronounce it like the French/German R. For me, ghayn was not that bad, but 3ayn took me months before I could pronounce anything close to it. My favorite 3ayn is laoshu505000's pronunciation of it (he's a member of this forum too) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LJi47Kzvv8&feature=channel_p age It's somewhat overemphasized but it gets the point across. =) And generally when I record videos I feel the same way, I tend to talk slower and often in an unnatural/robotic way, and often tend to repeat myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 59 of 160 08 August 2009 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
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I think that's great advice with the sentences. You know, it's funny, but someone said
that to me a while ago, and I just never got around to doing it. I think it's because right now my flashcards are English on the front and Arabic in the back (I don't know if this is the "best" way to do flashcards, but I tend to remember Arabic to English very quickly - it's more the writing out/saying bit that I have a hard time with), so inserting sentences can be messy. But I definitely want to do sentences, especially since it'll improve my memory for whole phrases, too, so maybe I'll start a new deck for sentences. I don't know what my problem with ghayn is - I just know that I have a hard time saying it! My khaa is already a little like my french R, so perhaps I'm just mixing the two up and need to sit down and figure it out once and for all. I'll check out the video in a few minutes - thank you for it. I think my 3ayn is usually comprehensible though by all means not perfect, but sometimes, when I say words that have 3ayns followed by casra, for example, I get very confused! I'm glad to hear that it's not just me for videos. Obviously I would need a lot of practice if I wanted to be a newscaster! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 60 of 160 08 August 2009 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
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I've just come across a fascinating (well, it's a little dry, but the idea is
fascinating) article about Chinese. http://docs.google.com/gview? a=v&q=cache:5BIH3sFxM9YJ:ling.cass.cn/yuyin/report/papers/ca o/Intonation%2520Structure% 2520of%2520Spoken%2520Chinese%2520Universality%2520and%2520C haracteristics.pdf+chinese+ intonation&hl=en&gl=us&pli=1 Just one thing I found interesting during my quick skim - sorry, it's too early for in- depth reading: "Shih (2001) conducted an investigation to a set of sentences, which were designed consisting of syllables all with high level tones, so as to avoid downstep effect from low tone features. The experimental data showed a clear declination effect, the syllables early in the sentence having higher pitch level than the later ones. At the same time, her data also showed a sentence length effect where longer sentences have higher starting F0 values. Of course, Shih also observed the focus effect, which was with pitch expansion on the focused word and steep declination after focus." Now, I wasn't reading very carefully, so perhaps this is refuted later on in the article, but I find this very interesting. Because I absorbed most of my knowledge of Chinese in a relatively natural manner (forced immersion environment, tons of listening materials), I don't have a huge problem with intonation generally. But I have friends who speak great Chinese in terms of grammar but who just sound a little... off, not in terms of tones - they know their tones - but just something hard to place. After reading this paragraph, I decided to try it for myself with the sentence "This thing is very delicious." Zhe4 ge dong1 xi hen2 hao3 chi1. I noticed immediately that the first tone of my dong1, now that I was paying attention to it, was much higher in register than the first tone of my chi1. I would say that if I were a piano, the two tones would be two keys apart. In general, my sentence did follow the pattern mentioned in the paragraph, where the first part of the sentence was higher in register than the second part. I would say that my rendering of the sentence pivoted on the neutral tone in xi. After that, I tried to read the same sentence without the modulation in tones, making sure to keep my dong1 and chi1 at the same level and my xi relatively high. Not only did it sound like I was inhaling helium, but it was just all around unnatural and bizarre. In fact, I sounded a little bit like some of my aforementioned friends! Now my own little experiment was hardly scientific. But I think it's an interesting question, anyway - the question of intonation in Chinese. I think most people would agree that if you wanted to achieve native fluency, pronunciation included, you would have to study intonation, too, and yet intonation is the hardest thing to study, because so much of it is simply natural. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 61 of 160 08 August 2009 at 3:52pm | IP Logged |
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Okay. I'm so curious about whether this rule of thumb holds true that I actually went
and uploaded two clips of the simple sentence I mentioned specifically for YOU. Yes, you. Assuming you know Chinese, please let me know which sounds more natural to you. It might be hard to tell because it's just one sentence as opposed to a paragraph, but we'll see. 1. http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/8/8/25 36914/more%20correct .mp3 2. http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/8/8/25 36914/less%20correct .mp3 Yeah, sorry, the file names give away my personal bias. But I could easily be wrong! Remember to take away the extra space this forum adds. Edited by bouda on 08 August 2009 at 3:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 62 of 160 08 August 2009 at 5:07pm | IP Logged |
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TODAY'S SCHEDULE
In an ideal situation, I would: - finish putting all my English to Arabic vocab on Anki - start putting my Arabic sentences onto Anki - read one page of my book or reader - look at the grammar in the last two chapters (preview) - redo some clip of me reading something so I can get pointers in intonation in complex sentences. I know I can definitely do the last two and I'm hoping to complete the first and at least a bit of reading too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 63 of 160 08 August 2009 at 7:47pm | IP Logged |
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Okay, I don't think I can finish putting all my vocab/sentences into Anki today. It's
about an hour since I sat down in this tea shop and I've only put in one chapter! 15 more to go, and let's not even think about the supplemental vocabulary for now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5601 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 64 of 160 08 August 2009 at 8:38pm | IP Logged |
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Going veeeeeery slowly indeed. Another hour and now I have about 225 words/sentences.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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