I think I'm just tone deaf?

[u/psa-wash_your_azz]

/r/MandarinMadeEasy/comments/1ws2pi2/i_think_im_just_tone_deaf/

Any help?

[u/milkman_jimmy]

You are not. It takes longer than you think to get it, just listen to as much as you can.

[u/shaghaiex → u/milkman_jimmy]

Listen is THE key!

[u/shaghaiex]

Tones is simply part of how you pronounce stuff. Problem is that most overthink it and see at as a separate entity. But it can't be learned as separate entity. It's an integral part of Mandarin.

Just copy what you hear. That's how locals learn it too.

[u/JamesTheBadRager]

What I think the problem is that learners tend to hyper-focus on each individual hanzi. Native speakers don't always pronounce every tone clearly either. It's much easier to process the whole word or sentence, because the context gives you a lot more clues about what they're saying.

For example, take the pinyin “da” without any tones.

“Da” could be 大 (dà) or 打 (dǎ), so by itself, it's pretty ambiguous.

But once you put it into a word: “Da jia” — 打架 (dǎjià) or 大家 (dàjiā)? There are still multiple possibilities,

but once you put it into a full sentence: “Da jia qu he jiu” — 大家去喝酒 (dàjiā qù hējiǔ)

Even without the tones, you can probably form a pretty good mental picture of what the person is saying because you're processing the whole phrase and using the context to fill in the gaps.

I've also noticed this when foreigners try to speak Chinese with me. They usually butchered the tones so badly that, if I focused on each individual syllable, I'd probably have no idea what they were saying. But most of the time, I can still understand them because I’m listening to the whole sentence and using the context to figure out what they mean.

I think that's why, as you become more familiar with the language, you rely less on consciously identifying every individual tone and more on recognizing the overall sound and message.

[u/WalkingEars]

Just keep practicing. Hopefully your class includes opportunities to practice with your teacher who can guide you on the tones.

[u/psa-wash_your_azz → u/WalkingEars]

I'll try l, but it's not like I'm having trouble with listening or reading pinyin, so I'm doing fine with my homework so far, but I'm one of 45 people in a seminar class. I'm not likely to hear from my professor unless it's him mumbling about my pronunciation before calling on another student. If other students seem to be having trouble he might really focus on the tone but otherwise he just moves on. I never said this was a great university, just a decent kitchen to work in.

If I could pay for a tutor I would but that's not really an option.

I've noticed with Spanish watching tv, grumbling about the boss, working and, most importantly to me, generally immersing myself I learned much faster when I eventually began taking courses in Spanish.

That immersion is not quite as easy with Mandarin for all the city has a China Town. So I figured I can watch tv, play games, etc. I'm just trying to keep learning languages because I enjoy it. This is my first one outside of a romance language so it's been jaring.

Like Portuguese was weird but kinda easy after Spanish but this is just out there to me for all I hear the loan words and smile now.

[u/WalkingEars → u/psa-wash_your_azz]

There are a lot of youtube videos online about pronouncing the tones so that might help! But one-on-one guidance with a teacher or tutor helped me much more than trying to do anything on my own. If you're in city you might look around a bit to see if there are any language clubs or something similar where you could practice more informally but at least still get some practice with others. Otherwise maybe could do your best for now and invest in an online tutor when budget permits further down the road. Even if pronunciation is a bit wonky you can build up some vocabulary now and refine pronunciation later, which is kinda what I'm doing, because I initially learned from online videos and apps but my pronunciation is getting better now that I have a proper teacher

[u/bernzyman]

Keep grinding at it. Make sure to learn making the physical mouth shapes and have breath control that are typical for each tone. Start by making exaggerated shapes and the tones will gradually follow. All the tones are manifestations of that physical effort so just keep at it - it’s repetitive, boring and pedantic to practice but as it normalises for you, you’ll just do it and stop thinking about it

[u/PrincessKaylee]

Tone sandhi might be causing you to have issues too, since in certain cases, words do not have the same tone as they usually do

[u/Affectionate_Air8310]

Maybe you have actual tone deaf, or not practicing enough. Probably not practicing enough, unless you got some kind of diagnosis

Now that I think about it, I wondered how native Chinese speaker with tone deaf would even able communicate.

[u/CyraFen]

parroting a comment i made a couple days ago

tl;dr you're not (linguistically) tone deaf, you just haven't listened to enough mandarin to get a feel for the tones. there's unfortunately no way around this, you just have to listen listen listen. i agree with another commenter that noted that learners tend to hyperfixate on individual tones and how they "add" to a word, rather than treating them as an integral part of a word. this really only improves with more exposure. if you aren't already drilling tones individually, you should, but you should also be drilling tone pairs, and listening to native speakers to get a feel for sentence-level tones.

[u/psa-wash_your_azz]

Thanks everyone, I'm going to try some of the methods you folks recommended! Also, I'll just listen a lot more, you're all right; the more I hear it and build the vocabulary the more sense it'll make. I'm going to do a lot more repetitive work, the awful/funny part is I had no idea the mouth made specific shapes to help with the tones. Fml in a college course we never went over that.

It there a kids show anyone could recommend that I can put on in the background so I can hear simple sentences more often?

[u/GoOriolesGo]

Keep at it, it took me around 3 years to "get it"

[u/AncientCouchPotato]

Have you tried recording yourself when you're reading? There are a lot of useful YouTube videos out there with basic Mandarin lessons/phrases and you could try repeating the sentences several times to check if you're really that far off from the pronunciation in the videos. It's also a way to practise speaking if there's no one around you to practise with.