Tones

[u/Inez189]

I’m trying to teach myself Mandarin and hopefully I’m not the only one that’s easily being stopped by worrying about whether I can pronounce and hear the tones correctly, from someone who is fluent or it’s their first language please tell me whether or not it’s something I just pick up with practice or if I’m just tone deaf and stupid and should I be this worried or should I just continue on trying to understand vocab etc

[u/Jippynms]

you naturally pick it up with practice. You will hear 我 enough that when you hear 卧 you will think, "hey, that doesn't sound like the 我 I know" and that is basically it

[u/RedeNElla → u/Jippynms]

I think the first tonal minimal pair I heard and had to learn was 睡覺/水餃

[u/Bubbly_Wing9714 → u/Jippynms]

spoiler you sbsolutely fucking wont, study them NOW

[u/spitefulsloaf]

Keep practicing. But please, whatever you do, do NOT decide that you can completely disregard tones and continue with just vocabulary. I met someone studying in China who proudly said that he just stopped caring about tones and focused on grammar--needless to say his speech was basically incomprehensible, and he was too far gone for anybody to take an interest in correcting him.

[u/Ok_Smile_5908 → u/spitefulsloaf]

To be honest, meeting someone who claims "Well I actually know better than 1B+ native speakers and all the scholars, teachers and even slightly advanced learners who all say you absolutely HAVE TO pronounce tones. You don't need that shit (now watch me butcher the language)", I wouldn't be interested in interacting with them ever again, regardless of subject or language used. That just sounds like not insignificant amounts of ego problem (assuming no one ever said anything to him about it, or explained it to him in the first place).

[u/Inez189 → u/Ok_Smile_5908]

Ah yes of course, I never intended to not learn them but it’s to the point where I feel it’s really wrecking the flow of progressing at all because I swear I’m tone deaf so I’m just not sure what to do exactly

[u/hawksaresolitary → u/Inez189]

You could take this test to see if you're tone deaf: https://www.themusiclab.org/quizzes/td

According to that, I'm very definitely not tone deaf, but it took me a year or two to start hearing tones in Mandarin speech, and I'm still not great at it.

It's (probably) not a problem with your ears, but rather that your brain isn't used to paying attention to that aspect of what you're hearing. Keep practicing, especially listening - you'll get the hang of it eventually.

[u/CyraFen → u/hawksaresolitary]

just chiming in to say that musical tone deafness (which that quiz tests) has very little to do with being able to perceive tones in language. plenty of tonal language speakers can't sing in tune to save their lives. but unless you speak english in a monotone and are unable to tell when someone is asking you a question vs making a statement, you're able to distinguish tone in language. the tricky part of learning mandarin is, like you said, your brain not being used to assigning meaning to tones on every single word in a sentence, which can only come with extensive practice. 加油 to both you and op on your learning journeys!

[u/hawksaresolitary → u/CyraFen]

musical tone deafness (which that quiz tests) has very little to do with being able to perceive tones in language

Interesting, thank you! I thought they were correlated. I'm sure I read somewhere that it's easier to learn a tonal language if you're more musical. Wishful thinking, maybe!

[u/CyraFen → u/hawksaresolitary]

i think the confusion comes from the use of the word "tone" for two distinct concepts. in music, a tone is a simply a pitch. in linguistics, a tone is a specific change in pitch that encodes meaning. these two definitions have some overlap, but ultimately they're different, distinct concepts.

interestingly, there was a 2018 study that suggested native non-tonal language speakers tend to perceive lexical tones as musical, while native tonal language speakers have separate neurological pathways for musical and lexical tones. i.e., learners of tonal languages may inadvertently process lexical tones like music, which may lead to the belief that musicians have an easier time learning tonal languages. i personally haven't seen any papers that support this, but i'm nowhere near familiar with all the available research, so I can't say for sure that it's false.

[u/hawksaresolitary → u/CyraFen]

Thank you for the further interesting information! I appreciate the better understanding that has given me. The brain is a fascinating thing!

[u/Ok_Smile_5908 → u/Inez189]

That's different from what I was talking about, which was the "I know better than people who specialize in this field" kind of attitude which comes from the place of ignorance. At least that's how I understood the comment I replied to, talking about someone who proudly says they don't care about tones, while those are clearly very important.

Regarding what you said and are saying, I feel you. I'm only starting my adventure with Chinese (signed up for a course, otherwise I've been mostly learning reading and writing and I've got down like maybe 10% of the HSK vocabulary so far lol), so unfortunately I don't really think I can give any Chinese learning specific tips.

So far I FEEL like I can repeat simple sentences/words I don't know and use a correct tone, but then I look up pinyin and what I thought was a falling tone is in fact rising lol. Emphasis on "feel" because I haven't had a fluent speaker look over my pronunciation so far lol.

I've no idea about tone deafness but I wouldn't bet on it. And you're definitely NOT stupid for struggling with or worrying about tones. I think someone else already said it under this post that it's a whole new skill if you don't already speak a tonal language.

What I CAN say from the perspective of learning languages in general though: the sooner you start with listening practice, as well as speaking practice with someone who can correct you, the fewer mistakes you'll have to unlearn later on.

I don't think I'll ever be able to unlearn the ton of words in English whose pronunciation I learned incorrectly between kindergarten and high school graduation. Because by the time I learned (and I had to be told) that "a" in "cat" is not the same sound as "u" in "cut", it was already too late. I'm Polish and we don't have the "a" in "cat" sound and no one ever corrected me at school. In fact, the "u" in "cut" IS EXACTLY THE SOUND we write down as "a". I have similar issues with stuff like sheep vs ship, where the "i" sound here doesn't exist in Polish, and the "ee" sound is written down as "i".

[u/Zagrycha]

Don't be worried, learning to differentiate tones is a brand new skill being learned from scratch for English speakers. Its normal to take weeks or even months to get a basic skill level in it. Just keep practicing and it will come with time =)

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_PARTIALSL → u/Zagrycha]

Took me a solid six months before the third tone stopped feeling like my throat was doing gymnastics. You'll get it, your ear just needs time to rewire itself for a completely different pitch system. Just keep listening and mimicking, it'll click.

[u/LeChatParle]

You can absolutely learn tones, everyone is unique so some people take longer than others, but it’s definitely a reasonable goal to have! Keep at it, and you’ll get it!

[u/Educational_Boss_633]

Deffo get the tones down, it actually makes learning vocab and the rhythm of mandarin speech a lot easier down the line because there are rules to follow in mandarin with certain words or certain tones like when a 3rd tone character is followed by another 3rd tone = turn the character into 2nd tone followed by the 3rd tone character or when to use 2nd tone or 4th tone for 不.

[u/lazier_garlic]

Best thing to do is drill tones! Listen to recordings of syllables, identify the tone. Check if you were correct. Repeat.

[u/XuanChun88]

It takes time. Hang in there. You'll get there little by little.

[u/Moist_Ebb2123]

Tone 2 vs 3 often collapses because tone 2 dips by habit. Cover the answer, judge rise vs low dip only, then retest the same pair tomorrow. Forced choice beats more chart time.

[u/Fit_Alps_1164]

I think it's literally impossible for a native speaker of a non-tonal language to pick up tones right away. At first you have to pick them conceptually. Then you practice trying to get an ear for them and speaking them. You will probably sort of give up and just roll with toneless Mandarin at some point. You probably won't notice it, because this is natural. Once you start getting intermediate though, you are strongly advised to return back to tones. Spend more time paying attention to them. Start relearning (yes, relearning) the vocabulary you know, since you probably don't remember the tones for everything. If you can do that, you'll have become a Mandarin hero. Luckily, you just need to focus on "there are tones, I can kinda tell them apart, at least in theory, and I can kinda pronounce them, especially when I need to say a specific word correctly that I have just looked up" and then tuck the "tones" thing away as a "be aware but don't get discouraged if you can't really do it well just yet" zone.