16 ms·

Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

237 points by drastorguev 7y ago

drastorguev 7y ago
Helping mandarin learners practice the tones in their own time without the need for a private tutor to correct them. Record yourself speaking in-browser, and get instant feedback: pitch contour and what tone that sounded like. Any feedback welcome!
- drenvuk 7y ago
  Quick problem, It seems to have a difficult time with deeper voices. Please fix. I do like it. Is there anything for whole sentences?
  - yomly 7y ago
    yep - a deep 1st tone is getting picked up as a 3rd tone
  - drastorguev 7y ago
    Hi, thanks for bringing that to our attention. We will work on it. We would like to work towards giving people feedback on whole sentences. We plan to work on 2-syllable words first.
byoung2 7y ago
I played back the teacher's recording as a test but it said I was wrong
baot 7y ago
I haven't managed to get this working yet on my phone but: would it be possible for the same code to be used for the tones of other languages?
- drastorguev 7y ago
  The website only works in Chrome or Opera at the moment - this may be what is causing you problems. Potentially yes - we are starting with Mandarin because it's such a popular language to learn. What other languages would you like to see?
drenvuk 7y ago
This is GREAT. I have always had an issue with tone 2 and 3 but it turns out I have this tiny dip before the rise in my tone 2. It took a while looking at the tone patterns before I worked it out. Now give me something for that stupid ü or u-umlaut and then I might actually sound ok.
- ylyn 7y ago
  That's actually fine. (I'm a native bilingual speaker, although not from PRC.) Also, the 3rd tone is characterised more by being low than the fall-then-rise. In fast speech the rising part is often not heard; it's only really present in stressed syllables or possibly at the ends of sentences.
  - drenvuk 7y ago
    Any tips for the ü?
    - kenneth 7y ago
      As a native french speaking, the mandarin nǔ is one of the few things I actually find super easy. Helps that we have the exact same ü sound in french.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      yu combines the tongue position of yi and the lip rounding of wu. Being able to take apart the individual components of a sound and consciously reassemble them into something different is very helpful for language learning. If you're not sure what the components are, try reading the corresponding Wikipedia article (usually linked in the phonology section of the article about the given language): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel
allan_s 7y ago
does it have some connections (in term of inspiration/algorithm etc.) with speakgoodchinese ? (an opensource project to help practice tone) http://www.speakgoodchinese.org/ http://www.speakgoodchinese.org/ https://robvanson.github.io/sgc3/ https://robvanson.github.io/sgc3/
- reubenbond 7y ago
  Great! We need more freely available, open-source language learning apps. I made one for reading/typing mandarin on Android: https://github.com/ReubenBond/HanBaoBao https://github.com/ReubenBond/HanBaoBao / https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tallogre.hanbaobao https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tallogre.h...
aashiq 7y ago
I'm not sure it's working for tone 1. I played back the teacher's recording and it thought it was tone 3. i was able to get 2,3,4 right though, and i think it probably helped my tone2
- zasz 7y ago
  Haha the bottom of the site says that too: Unfortunately the system isn't very accurate at the moment, but you will quite likely be able to tell whether you are saying the right tone by looking at your vocal pitch contour and comparing it to that of the teacher.
jbverschoor 7y ago
Doesn't work... it doesn't work It only seems to check the frequency. The shape doesn't seem to matter, and i the shape would be correct, it classifies as incorrect
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  They said it isn't accurate. Also check if there is too much noice and that you are for example starting the third tone relatively high.
rollinDyno 7y ago
I use hearing aids and always have trouble discerning tones, this is my only gripe with learning chinese and it is hindering me. I have learned english and have got rid of my thick accent by imitating how other people speak, I should be able to do that with mandarin. I can just learn the pronunciation of the characters and adapt my accent as I speak. Why is there such a stress on memorising the tone for every character? E.g. most people will remember which syllable to stress in a word after vocalising the word, but when learning mandaring people add the tone to their flashcards and are expected to have a more direct conneciton.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  The analogy I've heard is that failing to distinguish between tones is like failing to distinguish between "dock" and "duck" in English. Using the wrong tone is a lot closer to saying the wrong word than saying the right word in a thick accent.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    The analogy to dock/duck seems fair, but I don't see why you don't want to call that an accent. Vowel troubles of that kind are a major feature of thick accents. Staying in the Chinese context, someone saying "fourth" in a thick Mandarin accent will actually say "force". (Depending on how thick; they'll probably say something more like "four-suh".) That's not because they're saying the wrong word -- they know what fourth means; they just can't say it. In context, this kind of thing isn't a problem because a speaker with a heavy accent applies their own sound changes in a systematic way. It's very easy, as the listener, to learn their accent and adjust to it... if they're coming out with otherwise normal speech. As a foreign language learner, you probably have a thick accent _and_ you also can't form a normal sentence, so context can't provide the support it normally would for your odd pronunciation. (If "dock" and "duck" were actually pronounced identically, that would cause no problems, in the same way that the identical pronunciation of "bow" (archery) and "bow" (decorative knot in a ribbon) causes no problems. That's most of why it doesn't matter if someone's accent causes them to pronounce some words as other words.)
yomly 7y ago
From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique are going to serve you well. Focus on shortening the tones you sound (while staying accurate) and focus on combining tones. Thankfully there are only 4 tones so only 16 unique combinations of two tones (actually only 15 because 3->3 isn't really used) And only 64 combinations of 3 tones If you master those combinations in terms of speed and accuracy (both speaking and listening) the rest of it can be composed. Then begins the long path to memorizing every phoneme+tone -> character pairing :)
- drchiu 7y ago
  I remember the same thing. The tones can be picked up relatively easily when practicing with actual Mandarin speakers. There becomes a "in-use" memory that's easier to recall than trying to remember all those tone strokes.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    I haven't had real-life experience, but I experienced a similar effect from vocabulary drilling in Duolingo and Skritter. Those have audio, and it tends to help with the memorizing.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all. The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how the language is used. Additionally writing things, chatting and the like. Third phase is immersion with speaking and listening. Those phases overlap, of course, but in my opinion that's the overall process. I've used it successfully for English and Spanish (though I haven't completed phase 3 in Spanish yet). In Mandarin I'm currently struggling towards mastering HSK 4 vocabulary, though relatively advanced.
f00_ 7y ago
Wish I could use this but doesn't work with Firefox or Safari :c
rahimnathwani 7y ago
It's great to have a tool like this be available without any software installation. I remember when I first started having Chinese lessons, my teacher used some Windows-based software to show me visualisations like these. It helped a lot to know where I was going wrong. The visualisations here are the most useful part IMO, followed by the example sounds. If you're a native English speaker learning Mandarin: one tip for the second tone is to make it sound like you're asking a question. In English, we raise the tone of the last syllable in a question. So if you pretend you're asking a question, you'll naturally get the right tone.
- drastorguev 7y ago
  Hi, do you remember what the Windows-based software was called, by any chance? Was it PRAAT?
claylimo 7y ago
If someone wants to learn how to speak chinese, the best way IMO is to repeat and mimic the sound of a native speaker over and over again. I used Glossika (glossika.com) 3 or 4 years ago when they were just selling a zip file of MP3s. So rather than trying to master individual tones out of context, you learn how to say words within a sentence context. And through space-based-repetition and daily practice, these sounds get more easily embedded and familiar with your tongue and your listening ear too. So rather than trying to memorize a bunch of tones, you're learning how all the sounds and words flow together, and that's how you learn to sound like a native speaker.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  I'd also suggest Duolingo which has audio for all sentences in its course and uses speech recognition. Additionally the Pimsleur courses are great, with non-interactive lessons you can listen to with a media player. But relatively expensive, if you want to own it legally. They also don't do characters at all, so it can only be a part of the journey.
  - faitswulff 7y ago
    As an alternative to Pimsleur, you can often find a login to Mango Languages at your local library's digital resources, which uses a very similar teaching methodology.
bayesian_horse 7y ago
Very interesting. Just because of the visualization I learned that my voice tends to have too much "tremolo" in the first tone and that I may be starting the third tone too low. Other than that it seems to default to the third tone with me, even when the spectrogram doesn't look like it. Duolingo has speech recognition for Chinese. It seems to check separate syllables, but I'm not sure how precise it judges and the feedback is lacking. Even more interesting would be multiple syllables in a sentence. And distinguishing the consonants. In my opinion every long enough Chinese sentence is a tongue breaker because I have to switch fast between consonants that my mother language doesn't tell apart.
longtimegoogler 7y ago
I think more useful, would be to play phrases and ask users to write down the pinyin along with the tones, at least for me.
moron4hire 7y ago
Incidentally, I'm working on a VR app for learning Mandarin. We use 360 photos of Chinese tourist locations and add interactive content to role play scenarios with your teacher (my company does mostly one-one-one instruction). You causally get to take a guided tour of a location with your teacher. For now, is just a tool we'll be using internally, but eventually it will be expanded to many languages, have a remote class option, and have homework assignments for individual practice, all integrating into our LMS.
andrezsanchez 7y ago
This is a really cool idea, but it doesn't seem to work. I enunciated each of the tones, and the only one it recognized correctly was third tone.
- savanaly 7y ago
  Tried this for awhile with my girlfriend who speaks Mandarin as her first language. It does seem to be slightly too picky, often calling my pronunciation third tongue when it should be one of the others, despite her saying it was perfectly fine to her ear. But on the other hand it called her pronunciation perfect all but one time, which seems pretty encouraging.
  - akavi 7y ago
    I think it might be trained on female voices. I'm a guy, and it called all of my tones "3rd tone" when said in my normal voice, but when I spoke in a cartoonishly high falsetto, it gave me perfect marks.
    - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
      I tried your trick, and it worked like a charm! I guess that's how I'll be speaking from now on...
jackconnor 7y ago
This is incredible. As a native english speaker, tones were by far the hardest part when living in China and speaking Mandarin. Good on you for coming up with a clever way to teach this effectively, bravo.
d33 7y ago
Didn't get past the microphone permission request. What is it needed for? It could be a good idea to first warn the user that it will be requested and how it will be used. Also, pardon a shameless plug - not sure how your app work because of the microphone permissions, but I also wrote a freely available Mandarin listening comprehension practice tool. It's pretty simple - I downloaded all zh-*.ogg files from Wiktionary, extracted tone numbers from the filenames and asked the user what they hear. You can find it hosted here: https://tones.strokes.ovh/ https://tones.strokes.ovh/ Source code available here: https://github.com/d33tah/chinese-tones https://github.com/d33tah/chinese-tones Anyway, keep up the work, good Mandarin learning resources are always needed!
- cddotdotslash 7y ago
  It's an app designed to provide feedback on your tones; I don't see how it would work _without_ microphone access.
  - d33 7y ago
    Ah, so it's about the computer recognizing the tones, not the other way around? Anyway, some sort of warning would make sense to add.
    - cddotdotslash 7y ago
      Yeah, I admit it would be nicer if the page loaded without the request first so you could see what it's about and then request the access once you clicked the record button.
      - drastorguev 7y ago
        Thanks for the feedback! We've done just that.
kenneth 7y ago
I'm currently learning Mandarin. My strategy so far has been to take intensive classes with a private teacher (a professional from a language school), 2h every day I'm in town. Each course is 20 classes (i.e. 40h), and after 10 courses you're supposed to be reasonably conversational. Because I only take classes when I'm not out of town, and I'm constantly traveling, I've completed about 3 levels in 6 months. I've decided to focus purely on conversational mandarin, and skip learning Hanzi (characters) entirely. So far, tones is the part I have the biggest trouble with. I'm told I'm alright (i.e. a lot of people are much worse), but I still feel entirely inadequate. I often remember vocabulary without the tone. I also have a ton of difficultly distinguishing tones when listening to spoken mandarin and only distinguish them based on context. That triggers some stupid mistakes like not knowing whether I heard mǎi (buy) or mài (sell), which have exact opposite meaning but sound the same to me unless I'm listening extra carefully. Whereas I can easily distinguish shì (to be, to try) and shí (ten) based on context. I feel, however, like I'm finally reaching a level of being able to communicate in a useful way outside of my classes. I've used mandarin for basic things in China and Taiwan (e.g. restaurants), and have mostly used it to talk to people when going out. There's something quite amazing about learning something new (really the first time I've endeavored something this big and different since college), and I feel like this'll be one that will pay serious dividends over time.
- bitcharmer 7y ago
  > Each course is 20 classes (i.e. 40h), and after 10 you're supposed to be reasonably conversational How on earth are you expected to be "reasonably conversational" after 10 classes (20h) worth of Mandarin? It's just impossible.
  - kenneth 7y ago
    You misread. A course is 40h (20 classes), and it takes 10 courses to get reasonably conversational. i.e. 400h of class-time (not counting homework, study, and practice in the wild time)
  - halfdan 7y ago
    I read the after 10 as referring to the number of classes. 400h seems a little more reasonable, albeit a lot lower than the usual estimate which has it over 1000h
peterburkimsher 7y ago
I wrote https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io to visualise tones in pinyin, using colour and font size. It helped me learn to read Hanzi, and sing along in church, even pick up some vocabulary for listening, but I always struggled with speaking. Whenever I'd try to speak Mandarin, people would just switch to English immediately. Hopefully Mandarin tone trainer will help!
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
This is a nice idea, but I think it needs work. It classified almost every tone that I spoke as 3rd tone. Granted, I'm not native, but I speak well enough that my 4th tone couldn't possibly be interpreted as a 3rd tone. What's the training data? Is it trained on both male and female voices? Anyways, very nice idea - I hope you pursue it and I'm looking forward to seeing how it improves over time!
pascoej 7y ago
This tool is exactly what I wanted whenever I was first learning pronunciation. I've found myself using siri to check my general pronunciation in longer sentences. This tool with segmentation would be a huge game changer.
pseingatl 7y ago
Doesn't work on Safari or Vivaldi on Mac OS. After working on tones, I proudly showed them off to a Chinese friend. "Are you saying it or singing it?" he asked. It was then I realized how subtle these tones have to be for conversation.
yellow_lead 7y ago
It's not really working for me or my girlfriend (native speaker). We can't get past 喝(hē) (tone 1). It keeps thinking it's a third tone.
- drastorguev 7y ago
  Hi, yes unfortunately at the moment the classifier can be quite inaccurate sometimes, especially if your microphone is catching some background noise. We will work on improving this.
Leary 7y ago
Bilingual native speaker here, got 0/3 of my attempts.
- tony 7y ago
  Non-native speaker but probably tried 20 times? I had to force it to make it work. I'm very very sure I can do the first tone. Would love it if this thing did work reliably though. Also would be nice to have one Cantonese.
  - drastorguev 7y ago
    Hi, yes the classifier needs some improving. We expect that it would be much more difficult to make an accurate classifier for Cantonese, although we could make a website which presents Cantonese words/phrases and lets you see your (and the teacher's) pitch contour. Would that be of interest?
- drastorguev 7y ago
  Hi, yes, unfortunately the classifier is not very good at the moment. We will work on improving it.
TheRealPomax 7y ago
Please do not block "using the website" until someone gives you access to the microphone. Simply make the parts of the page that rely on the microphone not work, and make it obvious they won't work until people give access to the devices you need access to. And in the mean time let them browse the page as normal, instead of force-hiding the content scroll bar and presenting a full screen overlay modal. If your page explains what it's for, locking people out of that content just because they don't trust you yet is intentionally crippling the experience for no good reason.
- drastorguev 7y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! We didn't realise this would pose such a problem. We've updated the website so it asks for microphone permission after people press the 'Record' button.
  - phyrex 7y ago
    Not on my iPhone you haven’t
    - unforeseen9991 7y ago
      Not on my PC running Chrome you haven't either
      - drastorguev 7y ago
        OK, could we please ask - did you access the website before we made the changes? If so - have you tried clearing your browser cache?
        XOPJ 7y ago
        Just tried is now for the first time, 8 hours since you commented and it instantly asked for my microphone and I instinctively blocked it.
solidsnack9000 7y ago
I instinctively blocked access before reading the page because there was no way for me to read what the page was about before granting access -- and there still isn't, because it blocks scrolling or reading until microphone access is granted.
- drastorguev 7y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! We now let you view the the page and only ask for microphone access when you press the 'record' button.
ridaj 7y ago
It's a good idea but (a) it doesn't actually work (tones get miscategorized as attested by the number of native speakers in comments who are having trouble) and (b) practicing words in isolation is of limited interest. The hardest part IMO comes from pronouncing sentences, which involves chaining tones correctly.
devin 7y ago
I can't play the teacher's vocal pitch. It errors out in both Chrome and Safari. Love the idea, though.
rckoepke 7y ago
This is fantastic, but would really love if I got realtime feedback on my main pitch as I am making it, instead of the full spectrogram 1-5 seconds later. Like a little line chart.
topmonk 7y ago
I just use google translate on my android phone and speak out full sentences. It's pretty good as long as the sentences are long enough, have correct grammar and are common things to say.
mshockwave 7y ago
I'm a native mandarin speaker but the website said I failed 9/10 questions. I guess it's the accent problem as there are hundreds of different mandarin accents across eastern Asia

237 points by drastorguev 7y ago

Helping mandarin learners practice the tones in their own time without the need for a private tutor to correct them. Record yourself speaking in-browser, and get instant feedback: pitch contour and what tone that sounded like. Any feedback welcome!

drenvuk 7y ago
Quick problem, It seems to have a difficult time with deeper voices. Please fix. I do like it. Is there anything for whole sentences?
- yomly 7y ago
  yep - a deep 1st tone is getting picked up as a 3rd tone
- drastorguev 7y ago
  Hi, thanks for bringing that to our attention. We will work on it. We would like to work towards giving people feedback on whole sentences. We plan to work on 2-syllable words first.

byoung2 7y ago

I played back the teacher's recording as a test but it said I was wrong

baot 7y ago

I haven't managed to get this working yet on my phone but: would it be possible for the same code to be used for the tones of other languages?

drastorguev 7y ago
The website only works in Chrome or Opera at the moment - this may be what is causing you problems. Potentially yes - we are starting with Mandarin because it's such a popular language to learn. What other languages would you like to see?

drenvuk 7y ago

This is GREAT. I have always had an issue with tone 2 and 3 but it turns out I have this tiny dip before the rise in my tone 2. It took a while looking at the tone patterns before I worked it out. Now give me something for that stupid ü or u-umlaut and then I might actually sound ok.

ylyn 7y ago
That's actually fine. (I'm a native bilingual speaker, although not from PRC.) Also, the 3rd tone is characterised more by being low than the fall-then-rise. In fast speech the rising part is often not heard; it's only really present in stressed syllables or possibly at the ends of sentences.
- drenvuk 7y ago
  Any tips for the ü?
  - kenneth 7y ago
    As a native french speaking, the mandarin nǔ is one of the few things I actually find super easy. Helps that we have the exact same ü sound in french.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    yu combines the tongue position of yi and the lip rounding of wu. Being able to take apart the individual components of a sound and consciously reassemble them into something different is very helpful for language learning. If you're not sure what the components are, try reading the corresponding Wikipedia article (usually linked in the phonology section of the article about the given language): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel

allan_s 7y ago

does it have some connections (in term of inspiration/algorithm etc.) with speakgoodchinese ? (an opensource project to help practice tone) http://www.speakgoodchinese.org/ http://www.speakgoodchinese.org/ https://robvanson.github.io/sgc3/ https://robvanson.github.io/sgc3/

reubenbond 7y ago
Great! We need more freely available, open-source language learning apps. I made one for reading/typing mandarin on Android: https://github.com/ReubenBond/HanBaoBao https://github.com/ReubenBond/HanBaoBao / https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tallogre.hanbaobao https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tallogre.h...

aashiq 7y ago

I'm not sure it's working for tone 1. I played back the teacher's recording and it thought it was tone 3. i was able to get 2,3,4 right though, and i think it probably helped my tone2

zasz 7y ago
Haha the bottom of the site says that too: Unfortunately the system isn't very accurate at the moment, but you will quite likely be able to tell whether you are saying the right tone by looking at your vocal pitch contour and comparing it to that of the teacher.

jbverschoor 7y ago

Doesn't work... it doesn't work It only seems to check the frequency. The shape doesn't seem to matter, and i the shape would be correct, it classifies as incorrect

bayesian_horse 7y ago
They said it isn't accurate. Also check if there is too much noice and that you are for example starting the third tone relatively high.

rollinDyno 7y ago

I use hearing aids and always have trouble discerning tones, this is my only gripe with learning chinese and it is hindering me. I have learned english and have got rid of my thick accent by imitating how other people speak, I should be able to do that with mandarin. I can just learn the pronunciation of the characters and adapt my accent as I speak. Why is there such a stress on memorising the tone for every character? E.g. most people will remember which syllable to stress in a word after vocalising the word, but when learning mandaring people add the tone to their flashcards and are expected to have a more direct conneciton.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
The analogy I've heard is that failing to distinguish between tones is like failing to distinguish between "dock" and "duck" in English. Using the wrong tone is a lot closer to saying the wrong word than saying the right word in a thick accent.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  The analogy to dock/duck seems fair, but I don't see why you don't want to call that an accent. Vowel troubles of that kind are a major feature of thick accents. Staying in the Chinese context, someone saying "fourth" in a thick Mandarin accent will actually say "force". (Depending on how thick; they'll probably say something more like "four-suh".) That's not because they're saying the wrong word -- they know what fourth means; they just can't say it. In context, this kind of thing isn't a problem because a speaker with a heavy accent applies their own sound changes in a systematic way. It's very easy, as the listener, to learn their accent and adjust to it... if they're coming out with otherwise normal speech. As a foreign language learner, you probably have a thick accent _and_ you also can't form a normal sentence, so context can't provide the support it normally would for your odd pronunciation. (If "dock" and "duck" were actually pronounced identically, that would cause no problems, in the same way that the identical pronunciation of "bow" (archery) and "bow" (decorative knot in a ribbon) causes no problems. That's most of why it doesn't matter if someone's accent causes them to pronounce some words as other words.)

yomly 7y ago

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique are going to serve you well. Focus on shortening the tones you sound (while staying accurate) and focus on combining tones. Thankfully there are only 4 tones so only 16 unique combinations of two tones (actually only 15 because 3->3 isn't really used) And only 64 combinations of 3 tones If you master those combinations in terms of speed and accuracy (both speaking and listening) the rest of it can be composed. Then begins the long path to memorizing every phoneme+tone -> character pairing :)

drchiu 7y ago
I remember the same thing. The tones can be picked up relatively easily when practicing with actual Mandarin speakers. There becomes a "in-use" memory that's easier to recall than trying to remember all those tone strokes.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  I haven't had real-life experience, but I experienced a similar effect from vocabulary drilling in Duolingo and Skritter. Those have audio, and it tends to help with the memorizing.
bayesian_horse 7y ago
Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all. The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how the language is used. Additionally writing things, chatting and the like. Third phase is immersion with speaking and listening. Those phases overlap, of course, but in my opinion that's the overall process. I've used it successfully for English and Spanish (though I haven't completed phase 3 in Spanish yet). In Mandarin I'm currently struggling towards mastering HSK 4 vocabulary, though relatively advanced.

f00_ 7y ago

Wish I could use this but doesn't work with Firefox or Safari :c

rahimnathwani 7y ago

It's great to have a tool like this be available without any software installation. I remember when I first started having Chinese lessons, my teacher used some Windows-based software to show me visualisations like these. It helped a lot to know where I was going wrong. The visualisations here are the most useful part IMO, followed by the example sounds. If you're a native English speaker learning Mandarin: one tip for the second tone is to make it sound like you're asking a question. In English, we raise the tone of the last syllable in a question. So if you pretend you're asking a question, you'll naturally get the right tone.

drastorguev 7y ago
Hi, do you remember what the Windows-based software was called, by any chance? Was it PRAAT?

claylimo 7y ago

If someone wants to learn how to speak chinese, the best way IMO is to repeat and mimic the sound of a native speaker over and over again. I used Glossika (glossika.com) 3 or 4 years ago when they were just selling a zip file of MP3s. So rather than trying to master individual tones out of context, you learn how to say words within a sentence context. And through space-based-repetition and daily practice, these sounds get more easily embedded and familiar with your tongue and your listening ear too. So rather than trying to memorize a bunch of tones, you're learning how all the sounds and words flow together, and that's how you learn to sound like a native speaker.

bayesian_horse 7y ago
I'd also suggest Duolingo which has audio for all sentences in its course and uses speech recognition. Additionally the Pimsleur courses are great, with non-interactive lessons you can listen to with a media player. But relatively expensive, if you want to own it legally. They also don't do characters at all, so it can only be a part of the journey.
- faitswulff 7y ago
  As an alternative to Pimsleur, you can often find a login to Mango Languages at your local library's digital resources, which uses a very similar teaching methodology.

bayesian_horse 7y ago

Very interesting. Just because of the visualization I learned that my voice tends to have too much "tremolo" in the first tone and that I may be starting the third tone too low. Other than that it seems to default to the third tone with me, even when the spectrogram doesn't look like it. Duolingo has speech recognition for Chinese. It seems to check separate syllables, but I'm not sure how precise it judges and the feedback is lacking. Even more interesting would be multiple syllables in a sentence. And distinguishing the consonants. In my opinion every long enough Chinese sentence is a tongue breaker because I have to switch fast between consonants that my mother language doesn't tell apart.

longtimegoogler 7y ago

I think more useful, would be to play phrases and ask users to write down the pinyin along with the tones, at least for me.

moron4hire 7y ago

Incidentally, I'm working on a VR app for learning Mandarin. We use 360 photos of Chinese tourist locations and add interactive content to role play scenarios with your teacher (my company does mostly one-one-one instruction). You causally get to take a guided tour of a location with your teacher. For now, is just a tool we'll be using internally, but eventually it will be expanded to many languages, have a remote class option, and have homework assignments for individual practice, all integrating into our LMS.

andrezsanchez 7y ago

This is a really cool idea, but it doesn't seem to work. I enunciated each of the tones, and the only one it recognized correctly was third tone.

savanaly 7y ago
Tried this for awhile with my girlfriend who speaks Mandarin as her first language. It does seem to be slightly too picky, often calling my pronunciation third tongue when it should be one of the others, despite her saying it was perfectly fine to her ear. But on the other hand it called her pronunciation perfect all but one time, which seems pretty encouraging.
- akavi 7y ago
  I think it might be trained on female voices. I'm a guy, and it called all of my tones "3rd tone" when said in my normal voice, but when I spoke in a cartoonishly high falsetto, it gave me perfect marks.
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    I tried your trick, and it worked like a charm! I guess that's how I'll be speaking from now on...

jackconnor 7y ago

This is incredible. As a native english speaker, tones were by far the hardest part when living in China and speaking Mandarin. Good on you for coming up with a clever way to teach this effectively, bravo.

d33 7y ago

Didn't get past the microphone permission request. What is it needed for? It could be a good idea to first warn the user that it will be requested and how it will be used. Also, pardon a shameless plug - not sure how your app work because of the microphone permissions, but I also wrote a freely available Mandarin listening comprehension practice tool. It's pretty simple - I downloaded all zh-*.ogg files from Wiktionary, extracted tone numbers from the filenames and asked the user what they hear. You can find it hosted here: https://tones.strokes.ovh/ https://tones.strokes.ovh/ Source code available here: https://github.com/d33tah/chinese-tones https://github.com/d33tah/chinese-tones Anyway, keep up the work, good Mandarin learning resources are always needed!

cddotdotslash 7y ago
It's an app designed to provide feedback on your tones; I don't see how it would work _without_ microphone access.
- d33 7y ago
  Ah, so it's about the computer recognizing the tones, not the other way around? Anyway, some sort of warning would make sense to add.
  - cddotdotslash 7y ago
    Yeah, I admit it would be nicer if the page loaded without the request first so you could see what it's about and then request the access once you clicked the record button.
    - drastorguev 7y ago
      Thanks for the feedback! We've done just that.

kenneth 7y ago

I'm currently learning Mandarin. My strategy so far has been to take intensive classes with a private teacher (a professional from a language school), 2h every day I'm in town. Each course is 20 classes (i.e. 40h), and after 10 courses you're supposed to be reasonably conversational. Because I only take classes when I'm not out of town, and I'm constantly traveling, I've completed about 3 levels in 6 months. I've decided to focus purely on conversational mandarin, and skip learning Hanzi (characters) entirely. So far, tones is the part I have the biggest trouble with. I'm told I'm alright (i.e. a lot of people are much worse), but I still feel entirely inadequate. I often remember vocabulary without the tone. I also have a ton of difficultly distinguishing tones when listening to spoken mandarin and only distinguish them based on context. That triggers some stupid mistakes like not knowing whether I heard mǎi (buy) or mài (sell), which have exact opposite meaning but sound the same to me unless I'm listening extra carefully. Whereas I can easily distinguish shì (to be, to try) and shí (ten) based on context. I feel, however, like I'm finally reaching a level of being able to communicate in a useful way outside of my classes. I've used mandarin for basic things in China and Taiwan (e.g. restaurants), and have mostly used it to talk to people when going out. There's something quite amazing about learning something new (really the first time I've endeavored something this big and different since college), and I feel like this'll be one that will pay serious dividends over time.

bitcharmer 7y ago
> Each course is 20 classes (i.e. 40h), and after 10 you're supposed to be reasonably conversational How on earth are you expected to be "reasonably conversational" after 10 classes (20h) worth of Mandarin? It's just impossible.
- kenneth 7y ago
  You misread. A course is 40h (20 classes), and it takes 10 courses to get reasonably conversational. i.e. 400h of class-time (not counting homework, study, and practice in the wild time)
- halfdan 7y ago
  I read the after 10 as referring to the number of classes. 400h seems a little more reasonable, albeit a lot lower than the usual estimate which has it over 1000h

peterburkimsher 7y ago

I wrote https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io to visualise tones in pinyin, using colour and font size. It helped me learn to read Hanzi, and sing along in church, even pick up some vocabulary for listening, but I always struggled with speaking. Whenever I'd try to speak Mandarin, people would just switch to English immediately. Hopefully Mandarin tone trainer will help!

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

This is a nice idea, but I think it needs work. It classified almost every tone that I spoke as 3rd tone. Granted, I'm not native, but I speak well enough that my 4th tone couldn't possibly be interpreted as a 3rd tone. What's the training data? Is it trained on both male and female voices? Anyways, very nice idea - I hope you pursue it and I'm looking forward to seeing how it improves over time!

pascoej 7y ago

This tool is exactly what I wanted whenever I was first learning pronunciation. I've found myself using siri to check my general pronunciation in longer sentences. This tool with segmentation would be a huge game changer.

pseingatl 7y ago

Doesn't work on Safari or Vivaldi on Mac OS. After working on tones, I proudly showed them off to a Chinese friend. "Are you saying it or singing it?" he asked. It was then I realized how subtle these tones have to be for conversation.

yellow_lead 7y ago

It's not really working for me or my girlfriend (native speaker). We can't get past 喝(hē) (tone 1). It keeps thinking it's a third tone.

drastorguev 7y ago
Hi, yes unfortunately at the moment the classifier can be quite inaccurate sometimes, especially if your microphone is catching some background noise. We will work on improving this.

Leary 7y ago

Bilingual native speaker here, got 0/3 of my attempts.

tony 7y ago
Non-native speaker but probably tried 20 times? I had to force it to make it work. I'm very very sure I can do the first tone. Would love it if this thing did work reliably though. Also would be nice to have one Cantonese.
- drastorguev 7y ago
  Hi, yes the classifier needs some improving. We expect that it would be much more difficult to make an accurate classifier for Cantonese, although we could make a website which presents Cantonese words/phrases and lets you see your (and the teacher's) pitch contour. Would that be of interest?
drastorguev 7y ago
Hi, yes, unfortunately the classifier is not very good at the moment. We will work on improving it.

TheRealPomax 7y ago

Please do not block "using the website" until someone gives you access to the microphone. Simply make the parts of the page that rely on the microphone not work, and make it obvious they won't work until people give access to the devices you need access to. And in the mean time let them browse the page as normal, instead of force-hiding the content scroll bar and presenting a full screen overlay modal. If your page explains what it's for, locking people out of that content just because they don't trust you yet is intentionally crippling the experience for no good reason.

drastorguev 7y ago
Thanks for the feedback! We didn't realise this would pose such a problem. We've updated the website so it asks for microphone permission after people press the 'Record' button.
- phyrex 7y ago
  Not on my iPhone you haven’t
  - unforeseen9991 7y ago
    Not on my PC running Chrome you haven't either
    - drastorguev 7y ago
      OK, could we please ask - did you access the website before we made the changes? If so - have you tried clearing your browser cache?
      - XOPJ 7y ago
        Just tried is now for the first time, 8 hours since you commented and it instantly asked for my microphone and I instinctively blocked it.

solidsnack9000 7y ago

I instinctively blocked access before reading the page because there was no way for me to read what the page was about before granting access -- and there still isn't, because it blocks scrolling or reading until microphone access is granted.

drastorguev 7y ago
Thanks for the feedback! We now let you view the the page and only ask for microphone access when you press the 'record' button.

ridaj 7y ago

It's a good idea but (a) it doesn't actually work (tones get miscategorized as attested by the number of native speakers in comments who are having trouble) and (b) practicing words in isolation is of limited interest. The hardest part IMO comes from pronouncing sentences, which involves chaining tones correctly.

devin 7y ago

I can't play the teacher's vocal pitch. It errors out in both Chrome and Safari. Love the idea, though.

rckoepke 7y ago

This is fantastic, but would really love if I got realtime feedback on my main pitch as I am making it, instead of the full spectrogram 1-5 seconds later. Like a little line chart.

topmonk 7y ago

I just use google translate on my android phone and speak out full sentences. It's pretty good as long as the sentences are long enough, have correct grammar and are common things to say.

mshockwave 7y ago

I'm a native mandarin speaker but the website said I failed 9/10 questions. I guess it's the accent problem as there are hundreds of different mandarin accents across eastern Asia