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Help! Pronunciation "coaching" with non-teacher.
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shibole -
My wife, who is a native Mandarin speaker but not a language teacher, is trying to help me to
learn better pronunciation. We are making some progress (I think I can finally pronounce ü now)
but the problem is that when I don't pronounce something properly she often seems to have no idea
how to give me advice on how to do it correctly.
I'm using the Integrated Chinese textbook and the descriptions of how to make each sound are
somewhat helpful but a bit too technical with all the phonetic jargon. I find the Wikipedia pinyin
article to be somewhat helpful, and I also find that using one of those flash applets that plays
sounds for all the possible sylables in pinyin to be helpful.
Still I wonder if there is anything my wife could read about how to teach English speakers how to
pronounce Mandarin sounds. Does anyone know any web pages on the subject? It's OK or maybe
preferable if the pages are in Chinese as that's her native language.
Also, is it important to pronounce everything exactly right from the beginning or is it OK to have
sucky pronunciation for a while and get better at it later?
Thanks
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sthubbar -
This is a good question. My opinion is that I'm a huge fan of the Pimsleur method. If a person
wants to pronounce a language well, I would highly discourage them from using written material to
start. The reason is that our eyes have been programmed for over 20 years to pronounce these
symbols in our native language sounds. Now we are being asked to associate new sounds to the same
symbols and I think the challenge is too hard.
I recommend what Pimsleur does. They give you a sound for your ears to hear and then you do your
best to replicate the sound. You also use your ears to judge wether the sound coming from your
mouth sounds similar to the first sound you heard. Only after achieve a basic conversational level
in a language should a person then try to associate written symbols to those sounds. [BTW, this is
the way all of us learned our mother tongue.]
As a final note, we all have accents. What is important to me is whether my accent is
understandable or not. Most of the time it is, other times it is not. It is only on the times that
I'm not understood that I worry about my pronunciation.
Just my opinion.
cdn_in_bj -
Is she coaching you just by telling you what sounds right or not, or is she also showing you how
those sounds are formed? For instance, where should your tongue be when saying "chi" vs "ci"? This
is so natural to her that she doesn't think about it, and might not realize that it could be the
root cause of your difficulties. We western speakers are just not used to forming some of these
sounds, and need to teach our tongues new tricks. It's the same reason why many native Chinese
speakers have trouble with the "r" sound in English. Anyways, I suggest you try this approach with
her, if you haven't already.
Quote:
Also, is it important to pronounce everything exactly right from the beginning or is it OK to have
sucky pronunciation for a while and get better at it later?
I don't think you can expect to have perfect pronounciation from the start. Improvement comes
naturally with practise. As long as your wife can understand what you're saying, I wouldn't worry
too much. And even when you reach the point where you may think that your pronounciation is
dead-on, there will probably still be some subtle differences (subtle to you that is) which in
fact make a big difference to a native speaker.
roddy -
No need to get everything perfect right at the start, but I do strongly recommend that you make
sure you are aware of what your problems are and keep working on fixing them. Otherwise they
become habits, and then you are in all sorts of trouble
Lugubert -
One East-West problem is that many native speakers of Chinese just can't understand the concept of
consonants vs. vowels, but keep thinking in syllables only. When I asked some Chinese to explain
which speakers distinguish between the a vowels in 盘 pán vs. their to me much more closed [æ]
than their extremely open [a] in 旁 páng, one didn't understand my question at all, and another
one told me that "pan and pang are different (words/syllables), you can't compare them." I have
had such a comment from a native speaker of Chinese who had even studied languages in Europe.
mirgcire -
Yes, there is at least one web site that discusses this issue: www.sinosplice.com. As you
mentioned, the hanyu pinyin wikipedia site also has good information on pronunciation. For
practice you might want to try www.pinyinpractice.com.
There are some very specific positions that your mouth needs to form in order to make proper
mandarin sounds. In fact, unless you pay attention to this, your mandarin will be confusing (at
best) to native speakers.
For example to make the ü sound, start by the ee sound (rhymes with bee), then protrude your
lips. The tonge position for ü is the same as ee, but the lip position is different. This is even
more fun when you say words spelled xue. The lips start protruded and get stretched back into a
smile.
BTW, most words with this sound do not have the two little dots. Only lü and nü have the dots,
but all words starting with yu, xu, qu, ju are also pronounced with the same vowel sound.
The most difficult sounds for the mandarin learner are zh, ch, sh, z, c, s, j, q, x and r. For zh,
ch, sh and r, the sound is made between the tip of the tongue and the roof of the mouth. For j, q,
and x, the sound is made between the aveolar ridge and the surface of the tongue. The aveolar
ridge are those little bumps right above the teeth. You can get feel for the difference is by
comparing the english words "shirt" and "sheet", but the tongue is farther back with the mandarin
sh, and more forward with the mandarin x.
I guess the point I am trying to illustrate is that mandarin speakers have no idea about this.
They learned at such an early age that it would not have been helpful anyway. It really takes a
lot of attention to understand the relationship between the shape of your mouth and the sound it
makes. This is what speech therapists get paid big bucks for. To better understand how difficult
it is try explaining to a mandarin speaker how to pronounce "usually".
shibole -
Thanks for all the advice so far!
Quote:
If a person wants to pronounce a language well, I would highly discourage them from using written
material to start.
This seems to go against the whole integrated language learning approach though, or am I wrong? I
am using an integrated textbook and think this is the way to go.
Quote:
As a final note, we all have accents. What is important to me is whether my accent is
understandable or not. Most of the time it is, other times it is not. It is only on the times that
I'm not understood that I worry about my pronunciation.
I still have some cases where I'm not understood. I have been trying to keep track of which sounds
I have trouble with, but that does require that I write them down in pinyin.
Quote:
Is she coaching you just by telling you what sounds right or not, or is she also showing you how
those sounds are formed? For instance, where should your tongue be when saying "chi" vs "ci"?
She's sort of trying to show me, and I'm also trying to read written descriptions in the textbook
on how sounds are formed, but it's kind of difficult for her to show me. A guess an x-ray machine
would come in handy here....
Quote:
make sure you are aware of what your problems are and keep working on fixing them. Otherwise they
become habits, and then you are in all sorts of trouble
That's what I'm worried about, basically.
Quote:
One East-West problem is that many native speakers of Chinese just can't understand the concept of
consonants vs. vowels, but keep thinking in syllables only.
Actually I've noticed this already. I'd say that it extends to tone as well. Sometimes I say
something wrong like "míng" but she can't tell if I'm getting the consonant, vowel, or tone
wrong. In some cases she first says it's the vowel, then says it's the tone. Also, with these
compound vowels it often sounds like more than one sylable to me, and then I end up trying to
speak it in a way that sounds like two sylables to her even if I'm sure I'm sluring the vowels
together.
Maybe I should try to practice pronunciation for a while without looking at any pinyin just to
make sure that isn't causing confusion, but I need to be able to read how to pronounce characters
that I look up in the dictionary....
roddy -
I would ignore advice to avoid written material (ie pinyin in this case). Yes, you do need to
learn to associate old letters with new sounds, but that's a very minor issue compared to getting
your ears to hear those new sounds and your tongue and associated paraphernalia to make them.
Obviously don't go around pronouncing x as ecks though. Learn the rules of pinyin pronunciation
and that's a tool that will stand you in good stead.
I also suspect that new learners who don't use pinyin are going to have issues distinguishing
sounds and get themselves in an almighty mess if they don't have a teacher sitting on top of them
every time they open their mouths. There's a stage where you can't distinguish new sounds, as we
tend to funnel them into the sounds we already know - that's when you need something written down
to show you that even if you can't hear it, they're different.
As for something practical for you and your wife to do - download Audacity or a similar tool and
spend some time recording yourself and your wife saying a few syllables and compare them. Model
yourself on your wife and see how close you can get, and if there's a problem you can break the
syllable down and see where the problem is.
Textbooks - the only one I can personally recommend is this one, which you'd probably need to
order from China. Plus points is that it goes through basic pronunciation step by step, then tone
patterns, then onto intonation, sentence stress, etc, and there are clear explanations of what
your tongue, etc, should be doing at each point. Minuses are that it's all in Chinese, so perhaps
more useful for your wife than yourself at the moment, and the tapes aren't great quality. It was
recommended two years ago on here by Carlo, and I haven't seen anything better yet - but that said
I haven't looked.
I think maybe hoping your wife will be able to tell you what you are doing wrong is a bit
ambitious. It's hard enough for an untrained native speaker to explain how to make the right
sounds. Being able to hear what is going wrong is a whole different level of expertise, and the
only people I've met able to do it even on a simple level have had proper linguistics training.
That said, if you can find someone who can do it it's fantastic - one teacher I'm working with at
the moment seems to have a better idea of what my tongue is up to than I do.
cdn_in_bj -
Quote:
Yes, there is at least one web site that discusses this issue: www.sinosplice.com
Was the guy who runs that site (John) on TV a week ago? I'm pretty sure I saw him doing some sort
of English/Chinese "rap" about "the Jing" (Beijing). It was so cheesy that I had to change the
channel. But I must admit that his spoken Mandarin is really good.
Lu -
Perhaps you could try and hire a teacher/tutor for a while, to set your pronounciation straight.
Like some other posters noted, it's really hard to explain how you pronounce your native language,
you just do it. TxFL teachers are trained to teach people their native language. Spouses are good
for practicing your language, but not necessarity good teachers.
Good luck!
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