Comments on: Do You Have the Tone, Please?

By: Chinese in Cambridge

Chinese in Cambridge — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:23:10 +0000

This is excellent – I like 3rd tone especially! I’ll definitely refer my students to this.

I have written an article on pronunciation of Mandarin tones with a slightly different method – let me know what you think…

http://www.chineseincambridge.co.uk/index.php/tips-for-learning-mandarin-chinese.html

By: LadyCleopat

LadyCleopat — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:13:57 +0000

I really want to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese rather than Cantonese, since it’s easier. Here, though, most Chinese speaking people seem to speak Cantonese. AHHH. But I just love to hear the language and one day, I’ll be fluent.

By: MidnitePoison

MidnitePoison — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:19:45 +0000

China is a beautiful country and its language is amazing imo even though its quite hard to learn, when I was young I thought that chinese/japanese were sort of simliar but I was sooo wrong japanese is completely different, they have an alphabeth and stuff and its way easier to learn than chinese. I’m italian and I’m studying chinese and yeah the tones thing makes it hard to learn but its such a beautiful language *___* I love many aspects of chinese culture and i love drawning and writing chinese characters ;D. I’m still pretty far from being good in it but I just need to practice more, practice makes perfect =)

By: Mike Olfe

Mike Olfe — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:22:35 +0000

I also used to think that Chinese was very different in its use of tones. But then someone pointed out that in English tone equally important but used for a different purpose than in Chinese.

In English, tone is used to convey mood and emphasis: imagine all the different ways you could say “Hey” – suggestive, surprised, angry, questioning, etc.

In Chinese, these might all have the same tone, and the mood and emphasis would be expressed not by tones (which are used to differentiate meaning, not mood) but by particles which are stuck onto the end of the sentence – ba, a, ma, yo, etc.

By: Evan Quinlan

Evan Quinlan — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:22:35 +0000

I remember, when I was very little, my father telling me that words in Chinese could mean different things if you gave them a different emphasis. I didn’t believe it. Even still, as a speaker of English, it’s difficult to imagine having to talk with such tonal precision in order to properly communicate.