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This is curious to me. As a Westerner and speaker of a non-tonal language that started learning Chinese already being an adult, I never had any difficulty telli

This is curious to me. As a Westerner and speaker of a non-tonal language that started learning Chinese already being an adult, I never had any difficulty telling the difference between the tones. I did have difficulty with other sounds of the language (e.g. telling "x" from "sh" or "q" from "ch") - hell, I even have difficulty with English sounds, for example, to this day I need to pay an inordinate amount of attention to tell "eyes" from "ice" and there's no way I'll successfully pronounce them differently in regular real-time conversation. But the Mandarin tones? I find the difference obvious. I wonder if being a music aficionado, having played an instrument, etc. helps with the tones.

stcredzero 3y ago
for example, to this day I need to pay an inordinate amount of attention to tell "eyes" from "ice" I just find that obvious. Wherever I've been in the US, "eyes" is drawn out, but "ice" is short. (Think of imitating a southern accent for "eyes.") The only people I've ever heard saying "eyes" so it sounds like "ice" are native German speakers and other Europeans. (My wife learned German for her Chinese/German comparative lit degree, so the way she says certain things in English sounds menacing to me like how a WWII German movie character says, "We have ways of making you talk!" In particular, when she says, "Your handwriting...looks like WORMS!") I wonder if being a music aficionado, having played an instrument, etc. helps with the tones. I've been playing traditional music for almost 40 years, and I even qualified to compete at what's basically the world competition once. I think it matters most what one got used to as a child.
- yorwba 3y ago
  > The only people I've ever heard saying "eyes" so it sounds like "ice" are native German speakers and other Europeans In German, many syllable-final consonants (in particular, "s") are always voiceless, but the English plural "-s" is voicet (which strangely enough none of my English teachers ever botheret to mention) so if you apply German phonological rules to "eyes" you get something that sounts identical to "ice". But Germans hafe no problem pronouncing "eyes" if the "s" is not syllable-final, e.g. in "Eisen" ("eyesn", iron). To learn to speak a languache like a natife, you neet to break habits of thought you didn't even know you hat.
- totetsu 3y ago
  Isn’t the point of difference that, eyes had a little slide in the first vowel, ‘ah-I ss’ and maybe a more voiced z like s And ice just has extended one ‘ah- s’ a and a more interdental friction s
retrac 3y ago
No, you're not alone. Approaching Mandarin I expected tones to be some sort of big hurdle. They're not. They're largely obvious. It's a part of the vowel, basically. Linguistically speaking, there's very little distinction between a vowel and a tone - it's part of how you make the vowel. And tone and vowel quality interact in a complex way, which means you're hearing changes in the vowel, along with the pitches involved. As you mentioned, at the start I was more likely to mix up x and sh than I am to mishear a tone. Other languages use tone, of course, they just don't use it lexically to distinguish words. I also have played an instrument, etc. but I don't know if that's a factor or not. Now, pronouncing the tones is a whole other question. My own Mandarin has like 2.5 tones instead of 4, and I struggle to apply tone contours to long phrases without messing up everything involved. Both English and Mandarin have tone contours (and a lot of them are even the same, for example, slowly rising with a sharp rise over the last few syllables = question) but the tone contours of Mandarin interact with the lexical tones of a word. Something we don't have to worry about in English. I doubt I'll ever get enough practice to make that automatic.
- stcredzero 3y ago
  Approaching Mandarin I expected tones to be some sort of big hurdle. They're not. They're largely obvious. It's a part of the vowel, basically. Linguistically speaking, there's very little distinction between a vowel and a tone - it's part of how you make the vowel. Both a Korean teacher of mine and an old housemate (who was a native Russian speaker and had a degree in French) pointed out to me that Americans are "lazy" (that is the technical term, I gathered) about how they use vowels. We get dipthongs confused with pure vowels. Unless it's pointed out to us, we don't think of how we say "oh" as containing an element of "w" at the end. And tone and vowel quality interact in a complex way, which means you're hearing changes in the vowel, along with the pitches involved. Ah ha! I think you just helped me! I hadn't been thinking of these two together! the tone contours of Mandarin interact with the lexical tones of a word. Something we don't have to worry about in English. Tone of voice is diabolically subtle, the way British and American speakers use it. About half the time, we're using it to indicate the opposite or almost opposite meanings of words. My wife from Fujian doesn't think of speech in quite the same way. We got into an argument, because she kept shouting, "BE CAREFUL!" every time someone cut me off in downtown SF traffic. It took me awhile to understand that she was just frightened and was telling me to be careful. ("HOW COULD YOU TWIST SUCH A TENDER EXPRESSION OF CARE!?" -- Which she said in that tone of voice.) Tones don't occupy the same part of my brain as parts of vowels. It's more like a musical soundtrack accompanying the dialog.

stcredzero 3y ago

for example, to this day I need to pay an inordinate amount of attention to tell "eyes" from "ice" I just find that obvious. Wherever I've been in the US, "eyes" is drawn out, but "ice" is short. (Think of imitating a southern accent for "eyes.") The only people I've ever heard saying "eyes" so it sounds like "ice" are native German speakers and other Europeans. (My wife learned German for her Chinese/German comparative lit degree, so the way she says certain things in English sounds menacing to me like how a WWII German movie character says, "We have ways of making you talk!" In particular, when she says, "Your handwriting...looks like WORMS!") I wonder if being a music aficionado, having played an instrument, etc. helps with the tones. I've been playing traditional music for almost 40 years, and I even qualified to compete at what's basically the world competition once. I think it matters most what one got used to as a child.

yorwba 3y ago
> The only people I've ever heard saying "eyes" so it sounds like "ice" are native German speakers and other Europeans In German, many syllable-final consonants (in particular, "s") are always voiceless, but the English plural "-s" is voicet (which strangely enough none of my English teachers ever botheret to mention) so if you apply German phonological rules to "eyes" you get something that sounts identical to "ice". But Germans hafe no problem pronouncing "eyes" if the "s" is not syllable-final, e.g. in "Eisen" ("eyesn", iron). To learn to speak a languache like a natife, you neet to break habits of thought you didn't even know you hat.
totetsu 3y ago
Isn’t the point of difference that, eyes had a little slide in the first vowel, ‘ah-I ss’ and maybe a more voiced z like s And ice just has extended one ‘ah- s’ a and a more interdental friction s

retrac 3y ago

No, you're not alone. Approaching Mandarin I expected tones to be some sort of big hurdle. They're not. They're largely obvious. It's a part of the vowel, basically. Linguistically speaking, there's very little distinction between a vowel and a tone - it's part of how you make the vowel. And tone and vowel quality interact in a complex way, which means you're hearing changes in the vowel, along with the pitches involved. As you mentioned, at the start I was more likely to mix up x and sh than I am to mishear a tone. Other languages use tone, of course, they just don't use it lexically to distinguish words. I also have played an instrument, etc. but I don't know if that's a factor or not. Now, pronouncing the tones is a whole other question. My own Mandarin has like 2.5 tones instead of 4, and I struggle to apply tone contours to long phrases without messing up everything involved. Both English and Mandarin have tone contours (and a lot of them are even the same, for example, slowly rising with a sharp rise over the last few syllables = question) but the tone contours of Mandarin interact with the lexical tones of a word. Something we don't have to worry about in English. I doubt I'll ever get enough practice to make that automatic.

stcredzero 3y ago
Approaching Mandarin I expected tones to be some sort of big hurdle. They're not. They're largely obvious. It's a part of the vowel, basically. Linguistically speaking, there's very little distinction between a vowel and a tone - it's part of how you make the vowel. Both a Korean teacher of mine and an old housemate (who was a native Russian speaker and had a degree in French) pointed out to me that Americans are "lazy" (that is the technical term, I gathered) about how they use vowels. We get dipthongs confused with pure vowels. Unless it's pointed out to us, we don't think of how we say "oh" as containing an element of "w" at the end. And tone and vowel quality interact in a complex way, which means you're hearing changes in the vowel, along with the pitches involved. Ah ha! I think you just helped me! I hadn't been thinking of these two together! the tone contours of Mandarin interact with the lexical tones of a word. Something we don't have to worry about in English. Tone of voice is diabolically subtle, the way British and American speakers use it. About half the time, we're using it to indicate the opposite or almost opposite meanings of words. My wife from Fujian doesn't think of speech in quite the same way. We got into an argument, because she kept shouting, "BE CAREFUL!" every time someone cut me off in downtown SF traffic. It took me awhile to understand that she was just frightened and was telling me to be careful. ("HOW COULD YOU TWIST SUCH A TENDER EXPRESSION OF CARE!?" -- Which she said in that tone of voice.) Tones don't occupy the same part of my brain as parts of vowels. It's more like a musical soundtrack accompanying the dialog.