Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#21

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

Very interesting. Just because of the visualization I learned that my voice tends to have too much "tremolo" in the first tone and that I may be starting the third tone too low.

Other than that it seems to default to the third tone with me, even when the spectrogram doesn't look like it.

Duolingo has speech recognition for Chinese. It seems to check separate syllables, but I'm not sure how precise it judges and the feedback is lacking.

Even more interesting would be multiple syllables in a sentence. And distinguishing the consonants. In my opinion every long enough Chinese sentence is a tongue breaker because I have to switch fast between consonants that my mother language doesn't tell apart.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#22

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

drchiu wrote: post #20

yomly wrote: post #14

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique ar…

I remember the same thing. The tones can be picked up relatively easily when practicing with actual Mandarin speakers. There becomes a "in-use" memory that's easier to recall than trying to remember all those tone strokes.

I haven't had real-life experience, but I experienced a similar effect from vocabulary drilling in Duolingo and Skritter. Those have audio, and it tends to help with the memorizing.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#23

Post by reubenbond » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

allan_s wrote: post #6

does it have some connections (in term of inspiration/algorithm etc.) with speakgoodchinese ? (an opensource project to help practice tone) http://www.speakgoodchinese.org/ https://robvanson.github.io/sgc3/

Great! We need more freely available, open-source language learning apps. I made one for reading/typing mandarin on Android: https://github.com/ReubenBond/HanBaoBao / https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tallogre.h...

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#24

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

yomly wrote: post #14

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique ar…

Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language.

The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all.

The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how the language is used. Additionally writing things, chatting and the like. Third phase is immersion with speaking and listening.

Those phases overlap, of course, but in my opinion that's the overall process. I've used it successfully for English and Spanish (though I haven't completed phase 3 in Spanish yet). In Mandarin I'm currently struggling towards mastering HSK 4 vocabulary, though relatively advanced.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#25

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

claylimo wrote: post #19

If someone wants to learn how to speak chinese, the best way IMO is to repeat and mimic the sound of a native speaker over and over again. I used Glossika (glossika.com) 3 or 4 years ago when they were just selling a zip file of MP3s. So rather than trying to master individual tones out of context, you learn how to say words within a sentence context. And through space-based-repetition and daily practice, these sound…

I'd also suggest Duolingo which has audio for all sentences in its course and uses speech recognition.

Additionally the Pimsleur courses are great, with non-interactive lessons you can listen to with a media player. But relatively expensive, if you want to own it legally. They also don't do characters at all, so it can only be a part of the journey.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#26

Post by faitswulff » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #24

yomly wrote: post #14

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique ar…

Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all. The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how…

The Pimsleur Method inverts those phases and focuses on speaking and listening first. I've found it to be quite effective.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#27

Post by faitswulff » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #25

claylimo wrote: post #19

If someone wants to learn how to speak chinese, the best way IMO is to repeat and mimic the sound of a native speaker over and over again. I used Glossika (glossika.com) 3 or 4 years ago when they were just selling a zip file of MP3s. So rather than trying to master individual tones out of context, you learn how to say words within a sentence context. And through space-based-repetition and daily practice, these sound…

I'd also suggest Duolingo which has audio for all sentences in its course and uses speech recognition. Additionally the Pimsleur courses are great, with non-interactive lessons you can listen to with a media player. But relatively expensive, if you want to own it legally. They also don't do characters at all, so it can only be a part of the journey.

As an alternative to Pimsleur, you can often find a login to Mango Languages at your local library's digital resources, which uses a very similar teaching methodology.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#28

Post by dmix » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #24

yomly wrote: post #14

From experience of trying to converse with actual fluent speakers of Mandarin, there is a huge gap going from what you learn in the classroom, where you practise the tones in slow-mo, and how people speak and listen in reality. IMO there's no replacement for hardcore practise here - at the end of the day it is most like a physical skill so the learning tools you use for practising an instrument or sports technique ar…

Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. The reason is that it's "all or nothing". You either know and recognize all of the words in a sentence, or you can't cope with the sentence at all. The first phase of language learning is mostly theory. Mostly vocabulary and grammar. The second phase is mostly reading, reinforcing the theory, forming a good understanding of how…

> The second phase is mostly reading

Is that really practical with Mandarin and the crazy amount of Chinese characters?

I always assumed learning to speak/understand Chinese alone would be sufficiently difficult.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#29

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

rollinDyno wrote: post #13

I use hearing aids and always have trouble discerning tones, this is my only gripe with learning chinese and it is hindering me. I have learned english and have got rid of my thick accent by imitating how other people speak, I should be able to do that with mandarin. I can just learn the pronunciation of the characters and adapt my accent as I speak. Why is there such a stress on memorising the tone for every charact…

The more vocabulary you learn, the more you will find similar syllables with different tones.

In general, the "standardized" language tries to avoid this problem by encouraging the use of compound words where one syllable might do. That's why pinyin without tone numbers, for example in a chat, can actually be understood quite well. But with a larger universe of potential words, for example subject specific terms, it's hard or impossible without the tones, and at some point even tones don't work and you need the characters.

Chinese is a language with very low redundancy and very high information content per phoneme. If a listener misses one phoneme, be it through noise or whatever, the chance is higher to miss all the information, as compared to, say English or Spanish, where you can often delete whole syllables or multiple letters without losing the information.

I've heard hearing aids are really bad at distinguishing frequencies and locations. I don't know why exactly, but you might want to research that subject further. You might want to choose your next hearing aid for better "Chinese performance".

The Human ear does a Fourier transformation [extremely rough explanation] by sending the sound through a helix. Along that tube, sensing hairs are triggered by different frequencies. Depending on the hearing aids, that process can be mangled up.

Re: Show HN: Mandarin Tone Trainer – A ‘Helping Ear’ for Mandarin Pronunciation

#30

Post by bayesian_horse » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

jbverschoor wrote: post #12

Doesn't work... it doesn't work It only seems to check the frequency. The shape doesn't seem to matter, and i the shape would be correct, it classifies as incorrect

They said it isn't accurate. Also check if there is too much noice and that you are for example starting the third tone relatively high.