Mandarin Chinese Tone Combos and Tonal Interaction

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FREE training on how to fix your tone combinations, including lots of audio files: www.outlier-li...
Most people learn about the major tone change rules:
1) when two 3rd tones appear in a row, the first one becomes 2nd tone
2) 不 bù becomes bú (2nd tone) when it comes before a 4th tone
3) 一 yī changes to yí (2nd tone) when it comes before a 4th tone, and yì (4th tone) before a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd tone
But do you know about the minor changes? Most people don't! But any time a tone appears in context, it changes a bit! It might still be the same basic tone contour, but it changes in subtle ways.
For example, when you have two 4th tones in a row, the second syllable will start slightly lower than the first one. I'll cover all of the major tone pairs in this video and tell you exactly how the tones change in each pair.
Definitely check out the free training, where I go into even more actionable detail and provide you audio recordings to practice with!
Here's the link again: www.outlier-li...

Опубликовано:

11 окт 2024

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Комментарии : 16

@fjarran4782 Месяц назад

Thank you for this very unique video!! I've started Mandarin a couple weeks ago, and while learning vocabulary I felt like tone pairs were indeed not just the result of juxtaposing individual tones. In particular the 1-1 and 4-4 pattern, I ended up pronouncing exactly like you explained by mimicking my dictionnary voiceovers, but I've never heard any video talk about it! (And I have watched tons) By the way it is great that you use that kind of "voiceovers", which are pretty quick and "natural". In beginner videos they tend to detach the tones too much, whick makes it slow and unnatural. Which is helpful on the very beginning, but when you wanna practice, you feel a bit off. Also, great and clear explanations! This should have more views!

@OutlierLinguistics Месяц назад

@@fjarran4782 Glad it was useful! Yes, our philosophy is that you should “always aim at the target.” And the target here is authentic native speech. Unnaturally slow speech may be less intimidating for beginners, but it isn’t doing them any favors. Imitating authentic speech, on the other hand, does wonders.

@aafrophonee Год назад

Thanks for making this video! When I first started practicing tone pairs I noticed some of the "small tone changes" but brushed them off as audio errors or not-careful speech. But over (a long) time I continued to notice the small tone changes, and that these changes were pretty consistent among many different speakers. Your video is helpful for actually organizing these by tone pairs, 謝謝！

@OutlierLinguistics Год назад

Glad you found it helpful! This stuff really isn't taught the way it should be, and it's a shame!

@rmwever Год назад

Super cool and very useful. Any chance Ash might do something similar with Cantonese?? 🤪

@OutlierLinguistics Год назад

I’ll ask him! That would be really cool.

@Nemo_Anom 10 месяцев назад

A lot of these feel just very natural. For example, the 4-4 and 4-2. I think I've been doing this anyways just by practicing tone pairs. When you only have 4 tones (not counting the ghost tone), that gives you a lot of wiggle room when it comes to allophonic variation and prosody. One other thing to consider is that different dialects of Mandarin have different canonical or citation tones that putonghua. I find it freeing not to worry if my 4th tone went down enough or my 2nd tone went up enough as there's so much variation in how Chinese people speak Mandarin anyway.

@christopherlord3441 Год назад

It seems to me that in real life there are some circumstances when native speakers use the canonical tones: when they are reciting or reading out texts in the slow, formal way they might do at school: reading the text 'correctly'. It's as if they are reading the characters out one by one rather than in natural phrases.

@OutlierLinguistics Год назад

Yes, there are definitely some contexts in which the canonical tone is used! When emphasizing a particular syllable, for example, or yes, reading something aloud carefully, among others. But in general everyday speech, it's fairly rare!

@christopherlord3441 Год назад

@@OutlierLinguistics Absolutely. I am doing your tone loops chorusing every day as Ash's example is very convincing: reaching a high level without learning tones. My tones are not quite that bad but as a self-learner outside a Chinese-speaking country these combinations are very difficult to get to grips with and the information in text books is basically wrong. I once met a Czech who had learned Chinese with a native teacher who had taught him the recitation way of talking as correct. He became very fluent at doing this, and though it sounded weird and unnatural to me, a lot of Chinese would compliment him: presumably because he was talking like a schoolteacher.

@OutlierLinguistics Год назад

Ha, not too surprising there! Reminds me of this video Ash made a while back: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fxcdGOKcm2w.html

@christopherlord3441 Год назад

@@OutlierLinguistics It struck me that your tone practice loops are examples of canonical tone pairs. I've been doing one a day, usually twice over, and it is definitely a step in the right direction. Thanks a lot.

@OutlierLinguistics Год назад

@@christopherlord3441 Nice! We love to hear about progress!