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

mandarintonetrainer.com

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

#91

Post by tgb »

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.

I've just started learning Mandarin and would say that the characters have been easier than I've expected. Within a week of starting, I could read a dozen characters from Mandarin-language packaging of food items. Learning the characters at the same time as the sounds for words seems to take about the same amount of time as just the sounds for me. And recognizing the characters is easier than recognizing syllables from audio unless the speaker is intentionally speaking clearly and slowly.

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

#92

Post by TheRealPomax »

Please do not block "using the website" until someone gives you access to the microphone. Simply make the parts of the page that rely on the microphone not work, and make it obvious they won't work until people give access to the devices you need access to.

And in the mean time let them browse the page as normal, instead of force-hiding the content scroll bar and presenting a full screen overlay modal. If your page explains what it's for, locking people out of that content just because they don't trust you yet is intentionally crippling the experience for no good reason.

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

#93

Post by natch »

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…

>there are only 4 tones

5

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

#94

Post by xenihn »

csa wrote: post #64
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 yo…

>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).

Do you have any specific shows or podcasts to recommend?

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

#95

Post by xenihn »

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.

Have you looked in the Oakland Chinatown?

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

#96

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#97

Post by cddotdotslash »

d33 wrote: post #81
cddotdotslash wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah, so it's about the computer recognizing the tones, not the other way around? Anyway, some sort of warning would make sense to add.

Yeah, I admit it would be nicer if the page loaded without the request first so you could see what it's about and then request the access once you clicked the record button.

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

#98

Post by solidsnack9000 »

I instinctively blocked access before reading the page because there was no way for me to read what the page was about before granting access -- and there still isn't, because it blocks scrolling or reading until microphone access is granted.

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

#99

Post by ridaj »

It's a good idea but (a) it doesn't actually work (tones get miscategorized as attested by the number of native speakers in comments who are having trouble) and (b) practicing words in isolation is of limited interest. The hardest part IMO comes from pronouncing sentences, which involves chaining tones correctly.

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

#100

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #90
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone said "strawBERry", for example, I would identify that as unambiguously being the right word. There is a canonically correct stress, and native speakers will notice when you get it wrong, but I wouldn't think for a second they might be talking about some other food I didn't know the word for. Even with the words where stress does carry meaning (content, object, etc.), I would identify them as a single word…

> Even with the words where stress does carry meaning (content, object, etc.), I would identify them as a single word where context changes the pronunciation and meaning rather than two different words that happen to be written the same way. 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 mean…

That makes a lot of sense to me, yeah. I'm sold that's a better way to think about it than I was.
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