Chris and I talked about this all the time - honing tones, individual sounds, stressed syllables in sentences, and intonations are equally important if you want to speak really natural and "fluent" Mandarin Chinese, or any language in fact! Most curricula stop at the very beginning of helping Mandarin learners build up a solid foundation of the Chinese sound system, and it's rare for students to have proper separate training for their pronunciation from traditional vocabulary and grammar learning! BUT now you can join my “Finding Your Mandarin Voice” pronunciation training program on www.RitaChinese.com Hear Putonghua clearly, and speak CRISP Chinese by the end of 2022!
Rita’s pronunciation centric approach is unique and amazingly effective. Google translate finally understands most of my Chinese! I’m a native English speaker from the US who started learning Mandarin in 2016 when I was 64. I practice most days and have tried an enormous amount of methods and resources both on and offline. I’m currently 35 lessons into ‘Master Chinese Pronunciation’ course. It delivers results. I love it!
Just taking a minute to appreciate the work put into doing all the subtitles for this 45min vid, tones, characters, pinyin... such a great channel for chinese learning!!
Chris is right on the fact that you could still reach most of your goals without a good pronunciation, ...but pronouncing incorrectly will still harm you socially in many ways daily, and the longer you have been mispronouncing the harder it is to correct it later. I learned English at school with teachers that had a strong Spanish accent and bad English pronunciation. Nowadays I'm a dual national holding a British passport and I'm integrated in their society. So, from this perspective you could say that I have suceeded regardless of not having a perfect English pronunciation. However, after many years living here I can perceive I'm "a foreigner" to many of them, daily. In comparison, my German pronunciation is native like, so much so that when I lived in Germany people disputed me that I wasn't a local. I put lots of effort to reach this level. I learned the right pronunciation before everything else, and later on worked a lot on its prosody. After years without speaking it, and even when I have forgotten a lot of it, I still sound native. Needless to say that integrating in Germany was far more easier for me. A language is something requiring a lot of effort and constant dedication across the years, therefore what is the benefit of going through all that effort, spending so much time on it to then decide not to care enough about how it sounds? Every spoken language is sound, its written form appeared as a representation of it. The so much repeated sentence "I'm not so worried about my pronunciation, I just want to communicate" is a contradiction in itself because good pronunciation improves your communication even at subconscious levels - at the listener side, and also at your side, affecting how you feel daily, and the opportunities you're offered, how easy you can integrate, be considered "one of them" and therefore included in their lives, etc.
Agree. My story is somewhat familiar to you. Started with broken English pronunciation, corrected it later, was a pain I have to admit. Then in my 3rd language, Japanese, I focus on getting technically correct pronunciation. Now many Japanese people don't know I am a foreigner until I tell them.
@@hucancode9 I understand your journey because the reason for me to put so much effort in perfecting my German pronunciation was that I did not want to see myself with German in the same way I saw myself with English. I learned the lesson the hard way so to speak, so I did not want to repeat the experience. The most surprising thing with my case, I believe, that I would say speaks wonders about having good pronunciation, is that physically I'm always related with arabic people, my physical appearance is not that of a blond person with blue and 1.90 meters tall. For example: when I was holidaying in Turkey people talked to me in Turkish (a language I do not speak a word of). So, when in Germany people disputed me when I told them that I wasn't German, for me it was a confirmation that just by speaking the language to native level one can be considered at subconscious level "one of them" (unless people are racist and your appearance is the only thing that counts to them I guess. I never suffered any racist situation while in Germany, everyone was super kind to me).
@@AJ-fo2pl Thanks AJ, very appreciated. Just to avoid misunderstandings, I've been living in the UK for almost 16 years now. I hold a British passport, and a Spanish one. I'm (or was at some point) fluent in Spanish, English, German and Dutch, learning now Chinese, and have lived in Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and the UK up to now. The only place where I've found to be treated as "a foreigner" after living here for so long is the UK, that's why I say learning good pronunciation since the beginning, in every language you learn, is so important. Not implying the UK has no racism issues, they do, even at MP and PM levels, but my experience cannot be framed under that angle as fortunately I haven't experienced any direct racism. What I describe is the fact that as soon as I open my mouth it's clear I will never be perceived as "one of them". I do not think most people realise how important good pronunciation is.
Your interviews are always amazing. Excellent tips (from you and the people you interview) that I am now sharing with my English students. And I've been using them myself with mandarin and my learning process has been less painful than I imagined it would be lol And besides the content of the videos, the chance we have to practice with the subtiltles in Pinyin and Hanzi is great! I always watch the videos a couple times and pay close attention to the tones, consonants and vowels. And even though I'm super lazy when it comes to learning vocabulary, I end up learning a lot! I can't thank you enough for your hard work on these videos!
As an English as a second language teacher, I have discovered via teaching my special needs classes that have a reputation of being unteachable that insisting on perfect pronunciation helped them a lot. Even in as simple a language to pronounce as English. After only a year, these students can do things that they are not supposed to with ease.
@@jorasonprecious4269 是一位来自加拿大的 估计人家普通话讲得比很多中国人还要好。ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Y9KLjy47eu0.html. Sorry I’m putting the link without asking for a permission from the channel owner.
Wow! That was long! But so fun. Really enjoyed this conversation between you two. Really inspirational as I have been learning Mandarin for just one month. But I definitely want to get the pronunciation right.
This video is so great. Really you all hit on so many points about learning Mandarin and learning it well and I was like "wow. actually, my first Chinese teacher did that!" or "Yup, yup, yup, exactly!" Awesome, awesome video.
非常感谢！I'm glad Laoma is here and I can hear him slow down a little bit. I sometimes quit watching his channel because it's too fast for my poor level, but maybe he could do more videos with a speed more like this, oriented to learners. Thank you very much for your hard work with everything and also the subtitles, but Rita老师, if it's not asking too much, could you please provide the Chinese subtitles as CC on RU-vid, instead of embedded on the screen? (since you already do the hard work of including them, CC should be actually easier). There are many readers, software, etc like LingQ that can be used to import CC subtitles, and therefore it's a more useful learning tool.
It was the same when I moved to NZ and really set and fixed my accent. I lived in HK, so I was fine in spelling and grammar, but my pronunciation was all over the place. Once I set out to try and default to modern RP instead of Kiwi accent (18:12 I even tried the modernized BBC standard accent, but when I listen to others who also has he same accent, it sounded a bit fake), it just made understanding other Northern English accents a bit easier. But because I aim for clarity and accuracy before fluency, since I don't speak very fast even when I speak in my mother tongue (Cantonese), and my voice tire out easily, even now in my new job, where I'm constantly talking on the phone.
21:17 Before I fixed my English, I somehow worked out the little rules on the ways to speak Cantonese more correctly by reading the old fashioned dictionaries, but even now, I can't really explain how the "ing" in Mandarin is different from Cantonese. Two examples: If you ignore tones, 菱 (ling)and 寧 (ning) are both spelt the same in respective "pinyin's", yet they still sound different.
You are an awesomely interesting and nice person, Chris, and you know something...? I really think you should teach Chinese online besides English. I usually think very strongly that languages should only be taught by native speakers, but in your case, due to the high level of your Chinese and how quickly and effectively you were able to learn it I think that sharing and in some way "cloning" the best of your Chinese learning journey with other people could be invaluable and a real gift to the community of Chinese learners! Maybe a course taught in tandem with Rita would be the perfect combination.... Think about it!
19:31 I once got to a point where I learnt jargons from emergency services. I didn't watch medical dramas like ER or House, but actual reality shows or talk shows like Ambulance Australia, Paramedics, Dr. Oz to build the vocabulary in that field, so at the very least I could volunteer as a translator or interpreter in hospitals. While I didn't end up doing that, it made me talk more succinctly when I have to call for emergency services, and I can slip in the lingo a bit. I can at the very least read and understand my own blood test results without help.
Ustedes son uno equipaje muy bueno, des modellos; mi espanol no es tan bueno. 你们太帮偶！ 真好课堂! You're both great! Love learning from you, language power couple!
Really great interview and insights. The circumstances aren't quite possible for everyone, though, as not everyone is in a place in life where they can take that amount of time and expense to study.
Yesterday I had a first lesson with a new student who took lessons for a year at the Confucius institute... We had just a very basic introduction to Chinese pronunciation... and the student told me she never heard any of it, that her previous teacher (from China) never told them anything about pronunciation... Maybe she read the book from Beiyu :))
wow Rita should be a professor at a university or the very least have a job as a journalist. i have never seen anyone able to dissect a conversation and at the same time make it positive. I am deaf and growing up teachers never bothered to correct my mistakes so i grew up thinking i was "Okay"
Salutations from an retired French teacher It's weird to hear that Asian teachers generally never took into account the positioning of the tongue and the "proper" mouth opening. Whereas when they (Asians and any other immigrants) come to the west those "techniques" were especially taught in French lessons (even for us nationals😵💫😮💨). As elocution, clarity, intonation and pronunciation are the back bone of the French language. French is a language with conjugations, flexions, opposition between masculine and feminine, articles, singular and plural… Words (verbs, pronouns…) can have different forms according to their function in the sentence. Hellish to say the least. Chinese has it's simplicities as English does but as an agglutinating language (a morpheme = a word) it's syllabic writing system and the fact that it's a tonal language (which means that tone plays an huge role in creating new meanings) therefore good pronunciation is key for proper understanding of what is being convey. Both languages are fascinating. But don’t try to learn a language because it is easier. Every language is demanding, if you want to speak it on a good level, put the energy you need to and not the one you want to. All these efforts will be compensated by the lively interactions that our international world has to offer. ☺ 我真的很喜歡這個視頻。 通過克里斯的經歷向我們展示，只能幫助其他人理解一些非常重要的東西需要注意 Ce fut un plaisir, continuez à nous fournir de l'informations positives. Merci.
Very interesting! Thank you! I follow both Rita and Chris and always enjoy when they present together. I could not find the Speater on Google Play Store or on Apple Store. Could someone give me more information about this app?
9:08 the word jin 3rd tone Jinliang , did laoma say jinliang Jin with 3rd tone or 1st tone? my ear feels like hearing jin on the 1st tone rather than 3rd🤔
the best tactic for tones, i think, is to take them seriously, they are VERY important BUT to learn them experientially, passively, with lots and lots of repetititious listening to native speakers producing sample sentences or content in context. I just don't think there's any effective, let alone rapid, way to internalize tones through e.g. rote repetition Maybe repeating out loud the word when filling in a character worksheet? but that's not how i learned hanzi nor would it be how i recommend to learn the characters. i'm really fucking lazy, just learn passively by CONSTANT passive repetitive listening and reading.
@Rianyeryer Thanks. I listened to it again and I can't even hear what I thought I heard before. When I listen to it now, it seems to be as you said, 这个 follows it. Thank you.
I don't really understand this obsession with pronunciation. Imitation is the best teacher to learn how to pronounce well. Children do not learn to pronounce well with a phonetics teacher. I have lived for more than 30 years in Canada (Quebec - French-speaking part) as a European immigrant and I have met thousands of immigrants who have learned French. There's one thing I've noticed: if an immigrant immigrated and started learning French before the age of about 15, he won't have the accent of his native language when he speaks French. If he learned it after 15 or 20 years, he retains, to a different degree, the accent of his mother tongue. If in language teaching, little emphasis is placed on the positioning of the tongue and mouth during pronounciation, it is because this method is very ineffective. My humble advice is to simply listen carefully to how native speakers speak and try to imitate as much as possible. And, anyway, it's not that bad at all to keep the accent of your mother tongue. What is important is to be able to communicate well, to make yourself understood well and to express what you want to say well. All non-French-speaking immigrants I know in Quebec have an accent when speaking French, with the exception of those who immigrated as children with their parents. And they can communicate very well with native speakers.
i just figure that people with thick foreign accents (any country any language) are inexperienced rather than lazy or thoughtless. i don't think a proper or bad foreign accent is repulsive or endearing in and of itself.
