My tips on speaking Mandarin fluently (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

My tips on speaking Mandarin fluently
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

Arekkusu
Hexaglot
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Canada
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Joined 5381 days ago
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Speaks: English, French*, German^C1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

Message 17 of 19

12 August 2011 at 5:25pm | IP Logged

Vlad wrote:

I stopped consciously concentrating specifically on tones (tonal curves, progress, height and so on) and tried to remember the sound that I heard - without thinking about the fact that there are any tones in Chinese and tried to remember and reproduce the sound the best I could - according to what I heard.

Crucially, it's the part where you reproduce the sounds that matters most in remembering pronunciation. And this is where any kind of silent period completely falls apart -- if you don't make the sound, if you don`t pronounce the word(s), you have little to no hope of ever remembering it with accuracy.

Say a student pronounces business "biJIness" (a common pronunciation for Koreans and Japanese). If I pronounce the word correctly and ask them questions like how many syllables are in the word or where the stress falls, they tend to think back to their own pronunciation and give me the wrong answer. However, if I correct their pronunciation and make them say it a few times, they will now be able to refer to the new pronunciation and they can tell me accurately that there are only 2 syllables and that the stress is on the first syllable. And when they first start doing this, they usually feel quite impressed with themselves because they suddenly realize not only that they've been saying it wrong all this time (which they were unaware of), but also that they can rather effortly say the correct pronunciation already.
4 persons have voted this message useful

Merv
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5273 days ago
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Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian*
Studies: Spanish, French

Message 18 of 19

12 August 2011 at 6:35pm | IP Logged

Arekkusu wrote:

Vlad wrote:

I stopped consciously concentrating specifically on tones (tonal curves,
progress, height and so on) and tried to remember the sound that I heard - without thinking about the fact that
there are any tones in Chinese and tried to remember and reproduce the sound the best I could - according to
what I heard.

Crucially, it's the part where you reproduce the sounds that matters most in remembering pronunciation. And
this is where any kind of silent period completely falls apart -- if you don't make the sound, if you don`t
pronounce the word(s), you have little to no hope of ever remembering it with accuracy.

Say a student pronounces business "biJIness" (a common pronunciation for Koreans and Japanese). If I
pronounce the word correctly and ask them questions like how many syllables are in the word or where the
stress falls, they tend to think back to their own pronunciation and give me the wrong answer. However, if I
correct their pronunciation and make them say it a few times, they will now be able to refer to the new
pronunciation and they can tell me accurately that there are only 2 syllables and that the stress is on the first
syllable. And when they first start doing this, they usually feel quite impressed with themselves because they
suddenly realize not only that they've been saying it wrong all this time (which they were unaware of), but also
that they can rather effortly say the correct pronunciation already.

Which goes back to something I mentioned before: our knowledge of spelling influences our pronunciation. I see
it all the time with my parents putting a clear "w" sound before words like "wrong" and "write," even though I tell
them that it's completely silent. For this reason, when I started Assimil French I deliberately listened through the
first three or four lectures many times, repeating after each word/sentence to try to nail the pronunciation. I
didn't care that I had no idea what they were saying and I didn't look at the text. I just wanted to avoid being
influenced by the spelling. Now I feel much more confident with the sounds but still avoid reading the French
text until I've accurately pronounced the spoken lesson several times.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Carlucio
Triglot
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Joined 4858 days ago
70 posts - 113 votes

Speaks: Portuguese*, English^C1, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin

Message 19 of 19

12 August 2011 at 11:43pm | IP Logged

Thank you for this post, i'm studying mandarin and some tips you have written will be very usefull, the part you said that doesnt matter how much time you study per day you will still be learning slowly happened to a friend of mine, he studyed mandarin for 2,5 years and was very frustrated because he wasnst even able to read a newspaper.

For me as a beginner the main dificulty im passing trough is to not read a pinyin word with English or portuguese assumptions.

Edited by Carlucio on 12 August 2011 at 11:48pm

1 person has voted this message useful

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