Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mandarintonetrainer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 187 posts

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

#61

Post by GordonS »

kenneth wrote: post #49

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 dec…

> I've decided to focus purely on conversational mandarin, and skip learning Hanzi (characters) entirely

I initially did the same, but for curious and started learning a few characters too. It actually proved to be beneficial to my speaking too, as the characters provided a kind of visual mnemonic in a way I hadn't expected, helping me to remember sounds and tones.

And of course when actually in China, it's really beneficial to be able to read a menu, or at least have an idea of what you're ordering!

Absolutely do what works for you, but I'd suggest trying a few to see if you get the same kind of "visual reminder" benefit I did.

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

#62

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

This is a nice idea, but I think it needs work. It classified almost every tone that I spoke as 3rd tone. Granted, I'm not native, but I speak well enough that my 4th tone couldn't possibly be interpreted as a 3rd tone.

What's the training data? Is it trained on both male and female voices? Anyways, very nice idea - I hope you pursue it and I'm looking forward to seeing how it improves over time!

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

#63

Post by cddotdotslash »

d33 wrote: post #47

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 Wiktiona…

It's an app designed to provide feedback on your tones; I don't see how it would work _without_ microphone access.

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

#64

Post by csa »

kenneth wrote: post #49

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 dec…

Tones just clicked for me one day — I could hear them distinctly in both people who were speaking to me and when I was speaking (it hurt my ear to be able to hear all of my tonal mistakes).

The key to mastering tones (actually all of the spoken language of any language) is to listen more. Receptive skills like listening develop before productive skills like speaking.

In order to supplement your tutoring, I suggest you listen to a lot of Mandarin while you away from the tutor, especially when you are on the road. Specifically, I recommend TV shows, radio shows, or podcasts that are aimed at younger people (maybe 8-20 — younger than that has some strange kiddie terms, and older usually gets you full on adult language). Language targeted to young people usually has a relatively narrow set of vocabulary, and it usually avoids complicated words (e.g., like Latin-based words in English) and idiomatic phrases (e.g., four character combos).

Even if you don’t understand much or even any of what you hear, you will start to develop an intuitive feel for how the language sounds. Once your vocabulary develops, you will start picking up phrases, then sentences, then entire paragraphs. Somewhere in that journey, your ear will (most likely) develop to a point that you can not only hear other people’s tones, but you will naturally hear your tones as well (at least when they don’t sound right).

Best of luck!

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

#65

Post by jacobolus »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #58
jacobolus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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:…

That doesn't really pass the smell test for me. Even native speakers of a language in its native country are explicitly taught grammar and vocabulary in school. I could believe the Wikipedia article's weaker claim, that there's an extra step between instinctively remembering "了 is the perfective particle" and being fluent in the perfective aspect. But the idea that explicit instruction is useless , that consciously k…

> Even native speakers of a language in its native country are explicitly taught grammar and vocabulary in school

It is not that there’s no value whatsoever in formal study of grammar. It might come in handy if you want to be a linguist, an editor, a high-level writer, a lawyer, or the like. If students want to take a grammar course in high school or college that seems okay with me.

It just doesn’t teach basic language fluency.

Native speakers don’t start studying grammar until they have had 10+ years of full-time experience with the language. And anecdotally, the students who spend a lot of time reading independently don’t really need the grammar lessons (they already have a subconscious understanding of what is or isn’t grammatical, and the typical school grammar lesson is very slow and obvious for them), and the students who don’t spend any time reading independently and regularly speaking with educated adults would get more value out of instead spending the time reading or listening to someone read. YMMV.

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

#66

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

akavi wrote: post #54
savanaly wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it might be trained on female voices. I'm a guy, and it called all of my tones "3rd tone" when said in my normal voice, but when I spoke in a cartoonishly high falsetto, it gave me perfect marks.

I tried your trick, and it worked like a charm! I guess that's how I'll be speaking from now on...

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

#67

Post by thaumasiotes »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #50
thaumasiotes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, and looking up, I think the answer to the implicit question "Why are we supposed to memorize word tone in Mandarin when we don't need to memorize word stress in English?" is "You do need to memorize word stress in English. The details are up to you, but it's not optional."

But here, what I'm really asking is:

What's the difference between "saying the wrong word" and "saying the right word in a thick accent"? In my eyes, those appear to be the same thing, so I don't see how anything could be more like one than the other.

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

#69

Post by jacobolus »

EliRivers wrote: post #48
jacobolus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you take two novices and dump one into arbitrarily extensive grammar lessons for 2 years, and the other into spending a couple hours per day listening (i.e. actively focusing attention on trying to understand what is being said) to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will.

The first person is going to learn something, but it’s not an efficient use of their time if the goal is language fluency.

If you want to learn to read, then by far the most effective use of time is to practice reading, with whatever minimal bootstrapping is necessary up front to start reading very basic material.

This is not just speculation. There has been a ton of scholarly research on this topic.

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

#70

Post by csa »

baby wrote: post #51
kenneth wrote: post #49

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 dec…

I’ve tried this approach but it’s impossible to find a tutor in SF :/ So far I’ve used duchinese and wordswing but it’s def not as effective.

> I’ve tried this approach but it’s impossible to find a tutor in SF :/

I’m really surprised by this — Chinese is everywhere in the Bay Area.

Suggestions:

1. Contact the Chinese department at a local university (e.g., USF) and ask a professor there. They will know tons.

2. Go to any cram school with marketing aimed at Chinese kids (Maybe something like Kumon. There are cram school ads in Chinese everywhere) and ask if they know someone. There are a lot of folks who teach Chinese to heritage speakers of Chinese (i.e., folks who speak it in the home but have not learned it formally). The teaching technique is a little different, but you can probably find someone who has taught non-heritage speakers if you specifically ask for it.

Post reply on HN