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Yes. Do a lot of listening and do minimal pair drills. I don't think Chinese tones are that tough, but it can take a long time to train the ears when the actual

by xiaoma 10y ago

Yes. Do a lot of listening and do minimal pair drills. I don't think Chinese tones are that tough, but it can take a long time to train the ears when the actual sounds of the language are different, e.g. Taiwanese where there are aspirated, plain and voiced versions of a bunch of consonants. Basically k/g of English mapped to 3 different consonants, as did p/b, t/d, etc. This drove me nuts when I was learning: https://toshuo.com/2010/the-hardest-thing-about-taiwanese-phonics/ https://toshuo.com/2010/the-hardest-thing-about-taiwanese-ph...

zhte415 10y ago
I know nothing about Taiwanese pronunciation other than I probably know it when I hear it. :) I agree. To add: The most useful advice I read, which I found useful, is stop caring about tones of individual words. Listen to the flow of sentences, correct own pronunciation of words that are wrong with some drilling, and focus on communication. Like English, speaking word-by-word (or, character-by-character) doesn't sound natural. And also stop caring if you're met with an unfamiliar word. As long as you're focused on the sentence, it should be pretty obvious if it is a noun, verb, pronoun, or any other part of speech. Does it have material impact? If so, take a note and remember it. Basically, stop translating what one hears. Just understand it.
- xiaoma 10y ago
  I'll be honest. I think that's terrible advice for improving your accent, though it might be okay advice for improving your comprehension at an early level and maybe picking up some vocab and grammar along the way. For improving pronunciation, it's much more useful to pick a short passage that includes pretty much the full phonetic set of the language and drill it repeatedly. In years past, famous hyper-polyglots in Europe tended to use The Lord's Prayer for this. Now, there are a lot more options and you can also record yourself reading the passage and listen and compare your own sound with a native recording. Spend half an hour a day doing this for a month and it will have a dramatic effect on your pronunciation and accent in the target language. At least it has with every single person I've seen who has had the discipline to do it.
  - zhte415 10y ago
    Yeah, I agree short passages are great. Because they focus on the flow of sound, not on the individual word. Lords prayer as something to read does not fit well for Chinese. Chinese cannot sanely be read using pinyin. Chinese must be read by characters. I guess you know this, as your username is xiaoma. Speaking and listening doesn't need remembering a lot of what are to early learners, symbols, and to later learners a collection of particles that sometimes make cute sense but are more often a sense of time waste and pain. Learning characters one-by-one however makes no sense. Unless on wants to sound like a CCTV1 7pm news announcer reading a script, words need to be put in to context, and for that is the need to relax, and just say things as they're said.

by xiaoma 10y ago

zhte415 10y ago

I know nothing about Taiwanese pronunciation other than I probably know it when I hear it. :) I agree. To add: The most useful advice I read, which I found useful, is stop caring about tones of individual words. Listen to the flow of sentences, correct own pronunciation of words that are wrong with some drilling, and focus on communication. Like English, speaking word-by-word (or, character-by-character) doesn't sound natural. And also stop caring if you're met with an unfamiliar word. As long as you're focused on the sentence, it should be pretty obvious if it is a noun, verb, pronoun, or any other part of speech. Does it have material impact? If so, take a note and remember it. Basically, stop translating what one hears. Just understand it.

xiaoma 10y ago
I'll be honest. I think that's terrible advice for improving your accent, though it might be okay advice for improving your comprehension at an early level and maybe picking up some vocab and grammar along the way. For improving pronunciation, it's much more useful to pick a short passage that includes pretty much the full phonetic set of the language and drill it repeatedly. In years past, famous hyper-polyglots in Europe tended to use The Lord's Prayer for this. Now, there are a lot more options and you can also record yourself reading the passage and listen and compare your own sound with a native recording. Spend half an hour a day doing this for a month and it will have a dramatic effect on your pronunciation and accent in the target language. At least it has with every single person I've seen who has had the discipline to do it.
- zhte415 10y ago
  Yeah, I agree short passages are great. Because they focus on the flow of sound, not on the individual word. Lords prayer as something to read does not fit well for Chinese. Chinese cannot sanely be read using pinyin. Chinese must be read by characters. I guess you know this, as your username is xiaoma. Speaking and listening doesn't need remembering a lot of what are to early learners, symbols, and to later learners a collection of particles that sometimes make cute sense but are more often a sense of time waste and pain. Learning characters one-by-one however makes no sense. Unless on wants to sound like a CCTV1 7pm news announcer reading a script, words need to be put in to context, and for that is the need to relax, and just say things as they're said.