[Mandarin] Why learners need good tones? (Questions About Your Target Languages) Language Learning Forum

[Mandarin] Why learners need good tones?
Tags: Tonal languages \| Mandarin
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Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages

14 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Takato
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Message 9 of 14

18 June 2012 at 7:50pm | IP Logged

jeff_lindqvist wrote:

you won't sound Chinese unless you sound Chinese.

Oh, so I need to learn good pronunciation if I fancy sounding Chinese, hmm.

LaughingChimp wrote:

hrhenry wrote:

me wonder if context can't help at least a little bit [...] can't imagine a conversation where each tone is so disconnected that context wouldn't help.

Of course context can often help

Sweet! :D

LaughingChimp wrote:

doesn't mean you are not mispronouncing every word. And there are situations where context doesn't help, for example the words for ten and four differ only in tone in many dialects.

Is the non-standard, Cantonese pronunciation of Mandarin one of those dialects? xD Standard Mandarin pronunciation of "four" is "si" and "ten" is "shi", so they're distinguishable without tones.

Well, I'm glad it seems I only need to learn good tonal pronunciation if I would like to reduce my pronunciational mistakes to a lesser extent. :D Thanks for your opinions.

Edited by Takato on 18 June 2012 at 8:13pm
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LaughingChimp
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Message 10 of 14

18 June 2012 at 9:15pm | IP Logged

Takato wrote:

Is the non-standard, Cantonese pronunciation of Mandarin one of those dialects? xD Standard Mandarin pronunciation of "four" is "si" and "ten" is "shi", so they're distinguishable without tones.

Cantonese is not a dialect of Mandarin, but many Mandarin dialects (including taiwanese Mandarin) pronounce both as si, with different tones.
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lindseylbb
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Message 11 of 14

19 June 2012 at 9:44am | IP Logged

Don't make me listen to your chinese. It may be okay at first, but soon it would become torture……
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morinkhuur
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Message 12 of 14

19 June 2012 at 10:14am | IP Logged

Takato wrote:

jeff_lindqvist wrote:

you won't sound Chinese unless you sound Chinese.

Oh, so I need to learn good pronunciation if I fancy sounding Chinese, hmm.

LaughingChimp wrote:

hrhenry wrote:

me wonder if context can't help at least a little bit [...] can't imagine a conversation where each tone is so
disconnected that context wouldn't help.

Of course context can often help

Sweet! :D

LaughingChimp wrote:

doesn't mean you are not mispronouncing every word. And there are situations where
context doesn't help, for example the words for ten and four differ only in tone in many dialects.

Is the non-standard, Cantonese pronunciation of Mandarin one of those dialects? xD Standard Mandarin
pronunciation of "four" is "si" and "ten" is "shi", so they're distinguishable without tones.

Well, I'm glad it seems I only need to learn good tonal pronunciation if I would like to reduce my pronunciational
mistakes to a lesser extent. :D Thanks for your opinions.

That's just ridiculous.
You can't just ignore an integral part of the language just because you aren't comfortable with it. Just imagine
someone who only uses consonants in English because he thinks learning the vowels is too much of a hassle.
Y cn sll tll frm th cntxt wht h's trng t s nws, rght?

If you don't want to put in the effort to learn the tones, then don't learn a tonal language.
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Takato
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Message 13 of 14

20 June 2012 at 6:26pm | IP Logged

morinkhuur wrote:

That's just ridiculous.
can't just ignore [...] imagine [...] only uses consonants [...] thinks learning the vowels is too much of a hassle.
Y cn sll tll frm th cntxt wht h's trng t s nws, rght?

If you don't want to put in the effort to learn the tones, then don't learn a tonal language.

You haven't read well what I wrote. :( I told you implicitly that I don't just ignore the tones:

Takato wrote:

why's it better to know 1000 words with freaking well pronunciation of tones than knowing 1500 words with about half of them well pronounced regarding tones?

It's just that I can't remember all of them. I try my best remembering tones, but not having a tonal native language is a setback for sure.
Also, writing "Yu ken steel tall from the cahntoxt what he's traing to sey news, right?" would've been a better imagination since I always learn the vowels well. It's just that the tones are not always learned. So I mean failure to distinguish tones is rather like failing to know when to pronounce /ɒ/, /ʌ/ or /ɑ/. (These are IPA characters.)
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LaughingChimp
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Message 14 of 14

20 June 2012 at 8:27pm | IP Logged

Tones are roughly s important as vowels. There is no excuse for not learning them.
But you don't have to remember tones in the sense of knowing tone numbers, you just have to remember the sound of each word. I was told that even native speakers often can't easily write tone marks, so you don't really have to know which tone each word uses as long as you know how it sounds.

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