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A way to memorize Chinese tones. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6920 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian | Message 1 of 7 04 April 2011 at 3:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I just thought of an interesting way to remember Chinese tones.
Use the compass as points of reference and then mark the characters as you practice them.It's pretty easy to remember, as long as you know the correct tones of 3 numbers and one animal, you can link them to the compass points. Maybe as you write them you can put a little point in the right compass position to remember the character instead of trying to remember accent marks. N W E S Start at East (E) as tone 1. In Chinese, 1 is Yi and is said with the 1st tone. Next, North (N) is tone 2. In Chinese cow is Niu, and is said with the 2nd tone West (W) is tone 3. In Chinese, 5 is Wu is said with the 3rd tone South (S) is tone 4. In Chinese, 4 is Si and is said with the 4th tone. Just an idea I had. Hopefully, it will help someone. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| simpleasy Diglot Newbie Belgium Joined 4992 days ago 12 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 7 04 April 2011 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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This seems like a really good idea for people struggling to remember the correct tones.
My problem is more remembering words than remembering tones though, but I know some people who would find this aid perfect. :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evilgoat Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4991 days ago 8 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 3 of 7 05 April 2011 at 3:52am | IP Logged | ||
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That's an interesting idea, though I'm curious what advantage you thinks this offers over
the tone marks. The tone marks are, after all, very visually descriptive. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6948 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 4 of 7 05 April 2011 at 4:35am | IP Logged | ||
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This is a good start, but how about linking each tone to a compass point AND to an image?
For example, words with the second tone can be visually placed in the North and be associated in some way with a cow. For 弟弟 you could imagine a little brother riding a cow, and for 豆腐 you could imagine a cow eating tofu. A word with two tones would incorporate both tone images with the meaning of the word. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jsun Groupie Joined 5084 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes | Message 5 of 7 05 April 2011 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually tone itself bears meanings.
In Old and Middle Chinese, there were four tones (but they are NOT those four tones in Mandarin) 1. level 平 2. rising 上 3. departing 去 4. entering 入 And Old and Middle Chinese had voiced consonants like b, d, g, z, dz... Later, as many Chinese languages lost voiced consonants and more tones developed. Voiceless consonants developed into higher pitch tone groups called 陰調 (In Yin Yang theory, 陰 means shadow, dark, woman, soft....) while voiced consonants developed into lower pitch tone groups called 陽調 (陽 means sun, bright, man, hard....). Woman = higher pitch = 陰 Man = lower pitch = 陽 In modern Mandarin, tone 1 and 2 were developed from level tones, tone 3 was from rising and tone 4 was from departing. Mandarin doesn't have entering tones and syllables with entering tones were usually merged into tone 4 . Rising tone usually relates to things that have "endo" properties and departing usually relates to things that have "exo" properties. Rising tone was believed to be developed from syllable that once had a glottal stop in the end. Therefore, when you pronounce rising tone, you may feel that some kind of air steam flow into your throat. And sometimes this feeling matches match with the meaning of character. For instance, 買 (buy) is a rising tone character. So buy (get things in) matches with the feeling of air stream coming in. As the name of departing tone implies, it sometimes matches with words that have departing meaning. When you pronounce words that have departing tones, you may feel some air stream flowing out of your mouth. 去(go) is a departing tone. 賣 (sell) is also a departing tone. Mandarin doesn't have entering tone. So I've to use other Chinese languages to illustrate the function of it. Entering tone describes syllable that ends with p, t, or k. When you pronounce syllables with entering tone, you may feel that air stream is flowing into your mouth in a burst. In Hakka and Cantonese 入 (enter) Hakka: ngip Cantonese: yap The p-final (entering tone)closes your lips and makes you feel the air "entering" your mouth. In Mandarin, 入 just becomes tone4. Edited by jsun on 05 April 2011 at 4:44am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6849 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 6 of 7 14 April 2011 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||
You've got your tones mixed up there. Both 弟弟 and 豆腐 are fourth tones followed by neutral tones. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Superking Diglot Groupie United States polyglutwastaken.blo Joined 6642 days ago 87 posts - 194 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 7 13 May 2011 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Although this might be a little off the point of the main topic, I was having trouble remembering which number was which tone (i.e. which was 1st, 2nd, etc.) until I developed a way to remember them, and after that it stuck almost instantly. I associated the numbers with the tone marks, and thought of it as a race. 1st tone starts out high and stays that way, so he wins the race obviously. 2nd tone starts kind of low, but ends higher so he gets 2nd place. 3rd tone dips at the beginning, but comes back up at the end and manages to get 3rd place. 4th tone starts out high but drops to the bottom and comes in last. 5th... well, 5th doesn't even enter. Neutral tone never was too perplexing for me though.
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