Mandarin Chinese speakers- pronunciation tips?
Hi everyone,
Today I began studying Mandarin, which so far has consisted solely of learning a few rudimentary vocabulary items and repeating random sentences from the first two chapters of my textbook and accompanying audio CD. Although I know it is far too early to hope for fairly accurate pronunciation, I have recorded myself saying the following short sentence very slowly, and would be very grateful for any advice on how I could improve: 今天六号。李老使来吗?
Here is the audio: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13942413/Samplesentence.ogg
Thanks!
…thank you to the two who have answered so far. So, was I not producing the tones correctly? Was my speech simply distorted because I was speaking very slowly? Or was it a question of not articulating the individual phonemes correctly? By posting the audio, I was hoping for constructive feedback on what aspect(s) specifically I could improve, rather than a uniform rating from terrible —> decent.
Tagged with: accurate pronunciation • audio cd • constructive feedback • dropbox • mandarin • ogg • phonemes • random sentences • textbook • vocabulary
Filed under: Mandarin Written and Spoken
It is actually not bad at all. However, there are several issues:
1. The biggest problem is the pronunciation of "来", which should be lai(2) whereas you pronounced lai(4). This could cause great confusion or misunderstanding (When I was replaying your audio, my roommate was walking in and heard the sentence. What he made out of your speech was "Is your teacher a very bad one?" Don’t blame him because lai(4) could be interpreted as "bad".
2. Always pronounce the tones distinctively. I heard an ambiguous tone when you read "号". It is the last character of a sentence, which is the easiest place for people to detect an error, so you must be extra cautious with anything you say at the end of your speech. Here, please read it as if you are giving an order such as "Go! NOW!" . Another character you should pay attention to is "李": I noticed an effort to producing a li(3) sound when you read it. As a matter of fact, it is not necessary. The rule is that: when two third-tone characters are spoken in a row, the first char should be pronounced as if it bears the second tone. For example: although "李" alone is pronounced as li (3), it should be read as li (2) in this sentence, since the character following it is also a third-tone one.
3. Try to pronounce the consonants as accurate and clearly as possible. You did a good job with "今，六，号， 老师， 来吗". But your "天" sounds a little like "tsian" instead of "tian" to the ear of a native speaker of Chinese (Please note that the English "t" and Chinese "t" are not the same) . What’s more, you read "李" a little bit fast so that some people (especially people from southern China) may not be able to tell whether you said "ni" or "li" (that explains why my roommate heard "your teacher" instead of "Teacher Li". I was surprised since he is from Northern China).
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Overall, you did a good job! You pronounced most consonants and all vowels correctly. You can produce all four tones and are especially good at producing the thrid-tone, which, as far as I know, is difficult for most English speakers. What you should improve is to know which tone to use for which character, and polish the pronunciation of some consonants as I listed above.
I see potentials. Keep going and you’ll be a good speaker!
BTW: I don’t have much confidence in my English. If any part I wrote is not clear to you, please do not hesitate to ask.
Good luck!
The best way for me was to exagerrate the tones. The problem is we English speakers only speak in one tone, and when we speak Chinese, we tend to neutralize everything towards that tone. The thing is when you speak, you start to think in phrases and just getting out the words, and less about the tone. So it’s ok to exagerrate the tones when practicing word-for-word, tone-for-tone, and when you speak, it will be a naturalized decreased effect. Hope that made sense
I could barely understand the audio.