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

I studied Mandarin formally a little while ago up to HSK 2/3 level, at a reputable university based on a weekly 3 hour lesson. Although not comparable to your experience, I can relate to your approach.

On the course, we were encouraged to concentrate as much on the conversational side as reading simplified/traditional texts, mostly assisted via Pinyin. The only resources available to us were a well stocked library. It took so much longer and proved to be an incredibly frustrating experience at times, especially when desperately trying to find native speakers to converse with or decipher even the most basic of texts. As a lapsed 'student' I feel it was all worth it in the end, despite only retaining 10% of everything I learned, at least the knowledge can be justified as well rounded.

The other resources I leaned upon for assistance consisted of TV, news, movies, meetup and various language courses, which were no substitute for real interaction with native speakers. Wenlin and Plecodict were a godsend, when you did not want to consult a physical dictionary. Amongst others, the forum below sparked more interest in the wider aspects of the language and culture.

http://www.pleco.com/

https://wenlin.com/

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/

1. In both listening and production, differentiate between volume and pitch changes. 2. Tones have pitch contours. They're not just sudden changes from low to high etc. They are continuous changes in pitch over time. Try to visualize or feel the pitch curve (e.g. by using this type of tool). 3. Pay attention to the starting and ending pitches. 4. Don't overly connect syllables together. We tend to do this in English, but in Chinese, most syllables (characters) should not have a constant flow of air connecting them. 5. People usually mess up 3-2 combinations because they connect the third tone's low tone to the beginning of the second tone. Actually, the second tone should start higher than the third tone ends. 6. For each tone, there is a range of acceptable tone contours! This is how Chinese speakers are still able to have sentence-level expressiveness (e.g. happy sentence vs. sad sentence). Maybe try practicing some dramatic readings.

As your vocabulary expands, you start to come across more and more of these "unlucky pairs" that can be confused for one another. Some funny stories from my learning experience include "wo3 yao4 ying4 le!" instead of "wo3 yao4 ying2 le!" and "wo3 ba4ma1 hen3 xin4 jiao1" instead of "wo3 ba4ma1 hen3 xin4jiao4". ("I'm getting hard" instead of "I'm going to win", and "my parents have sexual intercourse" instead of "my parents are religious."

Tones aren't something that people usually master overnight. In fact, almost all non-heritage learners of Chinese never learn them perfectly. And a lot of heritage learners still have accents, even if they are able to speak the correct tone numbers.

Shows like "China Bridge" (Hanyu Qiao）and "Informal Talks" (Feizhengshi Huitan) both feature non-native learners of Chinese from a variety of countries -- the first one is a speaking competition, and the the second is a roundtable talk show -- and are great for comparing yourself to other learners of Chinese. (As an interesting side note, the China Bridge show is heavily biased in favor of learners from Western countries. In my opinion, seeing those dynamics play out on tv is an important part of the Chinese learner's cultural education.)

I've kinda obsessed about my Chinese accent (本人有点声控 哈哈）, and it's still a bit aways from being native. I think it's important to remember that with English, for example, being able to speak American English doesn't mean that you can speak British English perfectly. To truly "lose" any accent takes a lot of work -- but it's definitely possible. A big part of the Broadcasting curriculum in China involves losing your regional accent so that you can speak Standard Mandarin on the air.

Sorry for the discursive thoughts, but best of luck to all Chinese learners here!

Completely backwards, in my experience. Start with simple audiobooks, listen to them a million times, and you will be amazed by how much comprehension and speaking ability it gives you

Ah, this is where we disagree. In my view, the fact that strawBERry doesn't exist is just a coincidence. It's helpful in resolving what somebody meant by strawBERry, but not meaningful. The structure of English is compatible with a word pronounced strawBERry that means "barstool".

When I was a teacher in an English immersion school, I once asked a student if classes would be happening during a... holiday? I forgot why I thought they might not.

Anyway, the question was whether classes would be happening, and the student understood me correctly and responded "poss", leaving me confused.

He meant that classes were suspended, and he meant to say "pause", and he was aggrieved that the difference between the /z/ in "pause" and the /s/ in *poss meant so much to me when he thought it should be unimportant. But it was unimportant. The real problem was that the single word "pause" is not a valid response to that question in idiomatic American English. If it had been, I would have had no trouble understanding -- after all, there is no word "poss" to get in the way.

I see tone and stress the same way. Consonant choice / tone / stress are all parts of the word, and changing them gets you a different word.