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Tonal Languages Require More Talent? | ||
Tags: Talent | Asian Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4599 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 25 of 40 02 May 2012 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | ||
I'd like to preface this post by saying that my language experience is very limited, being somewhere between a B1 and B2 and French. Perhaps this big jump to tonal languages that you speak of is similar to the difficulty in learning a second language. A lot of people start a second language in school, but give up before reaching basic fluency. I think that's because when you learn your first second language, you are also learning to learn. It is also your first experience thinking in another language. This combination of difficulties is too much for a lot of people, especially when they don't have an interest in the language. So perhaps the jump to a tonal language is similar to the above. You just have to stick with it, even when it seems like you aren't getting anywhere. If you like the language it should make it far easier in the long run. I don't know about learning it be smart... if you were really that committed then it's just a question of putting your head down and starting to work. There are lots of people who like the idea of learning a language, but after that... In terms of specific advice I can't give any as I'm not studying one of these languages. Again I am not even fluent in my second language so I am not in too much of a position to speak. Just some thoughts. Edited by Swift on 02 May 2012 at 9:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Superking Diglot Groupie United States polyglutwastaken.blo Joined 6634 days ago 87 posts - 194 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 26 of 40 02 May 2012 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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To say that learning a tonal language isn't "just like" learning a nontonal language (in quotes because, in reality no language is just like any other in the strictest sense) implies to me that people who are native to them must then possess some kind of skill or talent that is beyond the grasp of non-speakers, or even non-native speakers.
I don't possess enough knowledge to say you're wrong, but yet I lack evidence that says you're right. Something in me resists the idea of tonal-language exceptionalism, that there's something about them that is fundamentally different from the languages we speak and that there's a practically unscalable barrier between the average Westerner and your average tonal language. Think about all the things we're willing to accept: A word can change meaning depending on how forcefully the air escapes your mouth when you say it; the relative height, front/back position, and flatness of your tongue; how close together your lips are, and whether your teeth are together or not; not to mention what syllable the word's stress falls on (you listen to a récord that someone else recórds, while the cómpact little machine in your kitchen compácts trash); how long you hold the consonant and the vowel. I submit, then, what is so extraterrestrially strange about a word changing meaning depending on the relative tone of your voice when you say it? If I can accept that Italian "anno" means "year" and "ano" means "anus," why should I balk at Mandarin 我是 (wo3 shi4) meaning "I am" and 卧室 (wo4 shi4) meaning "bedroom"? I recognize that people with hearing problems might face difficulty with tonal languages and that these languages present their own unique set of challenges, but what language doesn't? I've spent ten years mastering a language that everyone tells me (including this website) is extremely easy, and yet Spanish too has its own individual challenges that make it one-of-a-kind. In summary: Learning a tonal language is just like learning any other language. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4948 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 27 of 40 02 May 2012 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well I am not sure how seriously people will take this, but I haven't found the tones in
mandarin terribly difficult. I have been working with a teacher however, who corrects me EVERY time I miss tone something. IMO, you need to speak slowly, and over-exaggerate the tones until you get used to the way they sound. Then it starts just being something you think about. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5532 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 28 of 40 03 May 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||
I think what's really interesting is that it doesn't seem as though you've actually tried to learn a tonal language (tonal in the sense that Mandarin is) with the exception of listening to a handful of people speak it. Not being able to make sense of where one word ends and another begins is perfectly normal (and I'm pretty sure that not all Mandarin words are monosyllabic) and I think too many people place too much importance on learning things like languages quickly. It seems as though you've made your decision about how hard it is without actually giving it a try. At least one other person mentioned music and I will as well. I've been playing the flute for 15 years and have a pretty good grasp of music theory (as much as I despise taking theory classes) as well as music history. I once took my mom to a concert where the Manhattan String Quartet was playing three of Schostakovich's violin quartets. When we got back to the car after the concert my mom told me that "she just can't do it" referring to listening to Schostakovich's pieces. Why is this you ask? I'm assuming it's because she had had little to now experience to 20th and 21st century pieces. She hadn't been exposed to the dissonance that was in those pieces. Meanwhile who is my mom's favorite composer (not that she listens to a lot of classical in general)? JS Bach. She had been exposed to a lot of Bach and Baroque composers in general and that is what she was (and still is) comfortable with. This, of course, isn't to say that people who don't like Composers like Schostakovich and Prokofiev don't know anything about music in the style in which they composed because, of course, people can have their own tastes in anything. However, in this case, a lot of her inability to listen or take in the music had, more than likely, everything to do with the fact that she wasn't exposed to it and had no way of comprehending it. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5342 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 29 of 40 03 May 2012 at 5:54am | IP Logged | ||
Nobody knows for sure what goes on in children's minds when they are learning their L1, but people generally agree that children are born with the ability to distinguish all kinds of sounds and phonemes, including tones. As they are being exposed to their L1 spoken around them they recognize which sounds are phonemes in that language and quickly learn to ignore those that are not. In other words, if they hear a tonal language in their surroundings, they learn to distinguish tones and if not, they forget how to tell the difference. Thus native speakers of a tonal language are just as skilled or talented as someone who can distinguish the difference between long and short vowel, it's something we learn to do because it's necessary. Having studied both Cantonese, Mandarin and Thai, all of which are tonal languages, I have some experience in what it's like to learn tones. After a few years of practising on my own by listening to clips (I practised a lot!) I have been able to learn the tones of Cantonese and I often get comments that my tones are almost perfect. After having learned the Cantonese tones, the Mandarin tones were no problem at all! Practise is really all it takes to be able to learn the tones well and after that it's not so difficult anymore. I might add that I have never learned any musical notes. From what I've seen, many of those who never seem to learn tones properly simply don't take them seriously enough. I met someone who had payed to study Cantonese for years and was able to hold a long conversation, but told me that she doesn't even care about the tones. With that attitude, one can never learn to distinguish or produce tones! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4690 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 30 of 40 03 May 2012 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | ||
It seems I have to write it again - children can't distinguish phonemes, it takes them several months at least. Phoneme. isn't one exact sound, it's a range of sounds recognized as one meaningful "letter". It may seem that all A's you say are very similar to each other, but the difference between them may be almost as big as the difference between different vowels, especially in fast speech. Children could not learn language at all without learning to ignore these differences. Edited by LaughingChimp on 03 May 2012 at 6:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4740 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 31 of 40 03 May 2012 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is a true story of a Norwegian woman who suffered brain trauma during the WW2, and she had to relearn her language. Scientists were puzzled, because she relearned it to perfection, but her relearned Norwegian was tone-free:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/411393?uid=3738200&uid =2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=47698960028797 For native speaking children it is easy to learn the tones, just like it's easy to learn gender (6 year old Germans get every noun gender right, even for words they have never come across so far in their life). Some things require no effort when people are young. It has to do with neuroplasticity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity Edited by Camundonguinho on 03 May 2012 at 8:38pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4740 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 32 of 40 03 May 2012 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Most foreigners who speak Italian, speak it with 5 vowels only (that is with the Spanish vowels), neglecting the difference between open and closed vowels, as in: vènti (open; winds); vénti (close; twenty). If people neglect phonetically important things in a relatively easy language such as Italian, why should they act differently when it comes to learning more difficult languages. Many people neglect the standard/correct pronunciation saying: the context will make everything clear. We could say Japanese has a system of two tones (pitch accent), but virtually all courses are silent on this, so Japanese is famous for ''being so easy to pronounce''. The most difficult things about tones is not a) be able to hear and produce tones in isolated words but b) being able to hear and produce tones in connected speech For example in Norwegian, in connected speech, tones can skip syllable, or even change their character when they are one next to another in a sentence, suddenly a low tone monosyllable word can give its low tone to the first syllable of the high-tone two syllable word that comes after it, and the tone of this second word is automatically adjusted, it shifts to the 2nd syllable of this 2nd word. It's like a domino effect or a wave, So, at least in Norwegian, learning tones in isolated words is just half of the ''problem''. As in physics, waves can combine in many different forms, they are subject to mutual addition and subtraction, it's very difficult. Tone Production in Mandarin Chinese By American Students http://chinalinks.osu.edu/naccl-20/proceedings/02_guo_tao.pd f Edited by Camundonguinho on 03 May 2012 at 9:14pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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