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

#41

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

bayesian_horse wrote: post #31

faitswulff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hm, I'd say the Pimsleur method is quite good at teaching every-day language. Which is a worthwhile task, but the range of words is quite limited. I would suspect that in order to get up to HSK4 or even HSK5, just the audio portions of course, you'd need like double or triple the amount of lessons, which would be impractical. Of course, most people will start speakind and listening, in various forms, in phase 1 and 2…

> I would suspect that in order to get up to HSK4 or even HSK5, just the audio portions of course, you'd need like double or triple the amount of lessons, which would be impractical.

I have passed HSK4.

I am not competent in Mandarin listening comprehension, or in speaking (to be fair, speaking isn't a part of the test). Those skills aren't necessary to pass. The audio samples for HSK4 are a lot more generous with you than actual speech is.

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

#42

Post by savanaly » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

andrezsanchez wrote: post #36

This is a really cool idea, but it doesn't seem to work. I enunciated each of the tones, and the only one it recognized correctly was third tone.

Tried this for awhile with my girlfriend who speaks Mandarin as her first language. It does seem to be slightly too picky, often calling my pronunciation third tongue when it should be one of the others, despite her saying it was perfectly fine to her ear. But on the other hand it called her pronunciation perfect all but one time, which seems pretty encouraging.

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

#43

Post by jackconnor » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

This is incredible. As a native english speaker, tones were by far the hardest part when living in China and speaking Mandarin. Good on you for coming up with a clever way to teach this effectively, bravo.

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

#44

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #17

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 analogy I've heard is that failing to distinguish between tones is like failing to distinguish between "dock" and "duck" in English. Using the wrong tone is a lot closer to saying the wrong word than saying the right word in a thick accent.

The analogy to dock/duck seems fair, but I don't see why you don't want to call that an accent. Vowel troubles of that kind are a major feature of thick accents. Staying in the Chinese context, someone saying "fourth" in a thick Mandarin accent will actually say "force". (Depending on how thick; they'll probably say something more like "four-suh".) That's not because they're saying the wrong word -- they know what fourth means; they just can't say it.

In context, this kind of thing isn't a problem because a speaker with a heavy accent applies their own sound changes in a systematic way. It's very easy, as the listener, to learn their accent and adjust to it... if they're coming out with otherwise normal speech. As a foreign language learner, you probably have a thick accent _and_ you also can't form a normal sentence, so context can't provide the support it normally would for your odd pronunciation.

(If "dock" and "duck" were actually pronounced identically, that would cause no problems, in the same way that the identical pronunciation of "bow" (archery) and "bow" (decorative knot in a ribbon) causes no problems. That's most of why it doesn't matter if someone's accent causes them to pronounce some words as other words.)

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

#45

Post by skosch » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #28

bayesian_horse wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a huge asymmetry between learning to recognize characters and learning to write them. I've found that learning to read a basic repertoire of Chinese characters is surprisingly doable and a very helpful skill as a learner, to the point where I quickly found it easier to decipher the subtitles than to understand the audio when watching even children's movies. So, to answer your question, yes: it's practical, and a good idea.

Writing, on the other hand, requires truly knowing each character, every little stroke in the right place. Totally different beast. It takes many years to master and constant practice to keep up (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia).

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

#46

Post by mdturnerphys » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:39 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…

Ignoring the tone when learning a tonal language is equivalent to ignoring something like vowel differences or final consonants in a non-tonal language.

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

#47

Post by d33 » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

Didn't get past the microphone permission request. What is it needed for? It could be a good idea to first warn the user that it will be requested and how it will be used.

Also, pardon a shameless plug - not sure how your app work because of the microphone permissions, but I also wrote a freely available Mandarin listening comprehension practice tool. It's pretty simple - I downloaded all zh-*.ogg files from Wiktionary, extracted tone numbers from the filenames and asked the user what they hear. You can find it hosted here:

https://tones.strokes.ovh/

Source code available here:

https://github.com/d33tah/chinese-tones

Anyway, keep up the work, good Mandarin learning resources are always needed!

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

#48

Post by EliRivers » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 6:57 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #38

bayesian_horse wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Listening comprehension, IMHO is the last skill to develop in learning a foreign language. [...] 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. To clarify:…

Front-loading explicit study of grammar is a total waste of time.

I am far more competent in written Japanese than spoken, both reading and writing it, essentially through understanding grammar. "Total waste of time" seems a harsh appraisal.

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

#49

Post by kenneth » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

I'm currently learning Mandarin.

My strategy so far has been to take intensive classes with a private teacher (a professional from a language school), 2h every day I'm in town. Each course is 20 classes (i.e. 40h), and after 10 courses you're supposed to be reasonably conversational. Because I only take classes when I'm not out of town, and I'm constantly traveling, I've completed about 3 levels in 6 months.

I've decided to focus purely on conversational mandarin, and skip learning Hanzi (characters) entirely. So far, tones is the part I have the biggest trouble with. I'm told I'm alright (i.e. a lot of people are much worse), but I still feel entirely inadequate. I often remember vocabulary without the tone. I also have a ton of difficultly distinguishing tones when listening to spoken mandarin and only distinguish them based on context. That triggers some stupid mistakes like not knowing whether I heard mǎi (buy) or mài (sell), which have exact opposite meaning but sound the same to me unless I'm listening extra carefully. Whereas I can easily distinguish shì (to be, to try) and shí (ten) based on context.

I feel, however, like I'm finally reaching a level of being able to communicate in a useful way outside of my classes. I've used mandarin for basic things in China and Taiwan (e.g. restaurants), and have mostly used it to talk to people when going out.

There's something quite amazing about learning something new (really the first time I've endeavored something this big and different since college), and I feel like this'll be one that will pay serious dividends over time.

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

#50

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sat, Dec 21, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #44

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy I've heard is that failing to distinguish between tones is like failing to distinguish between "dock" and "duck" in English. Using the wrong tone is a lot closer to saying the wrong word than saying the right word in a thick accent.

The analogy to dock/duck seems fair, but I don't see why you don't want to call that an accent. Vowel troubles of that kind are a major feature of thick accents. Staying in the Chinese context, someone saying "fourth" in a thick Mandarin accent will actually say "force". (Depending on how thick; they'll probably say something more like "four-suh".) That's not because they're saying the wrong word -- they know what fo…

As you say, a fluent English speaker with a thick Mandarin accent will understand and often hear the distinction between "fourth" and "force". They just can't easily produce /θ/ in their own speech. If someone's flashcards said both words have the same pronunciation, even if they know it's important to "adapt your accent as you speak", I'd definitely say they're learning incorrect pronunciation.