I am also German. This video was really useful as it made me realized that these are exactly the tones that my Chinese friends and followers pointed out already several times=) Now I know why these are particularly difficult for Germans. Thanks =)
OMGGGGG the big news is actually so exciting 😭😭😭 please don’t burn yourself out but you’re actually the best mandarin teacher I’ve found (and trust me I’ve looked a LOT lol) and your videos never fail to both make my day better and reinvigorate my passion for studying mandarin!!!
Awww thank you so much Joe!! I'm really excited about the course, too, and I'm really enjoying the process to put all I know into this project. Hope you all will find it helpful!! 🙌🙌
Since my Chinese-speaking husband has drilled me on tones from the beginning, my tones are actually pretty good. Unfortunately, as soon as I add emotion to my speech I mess up my tones and I noticed most foreigners have this problem. I would love to do an advanced class about how to vary the overall tone in Chinese without changing the tones.
You made a great point here - the way how we emphasize syllables in the sentences is so different from how we do in Indo-European languages! And I'll definitely include that in my course as the more advanced part of my training system. 😊🙌
I am so happy that I stumbled across your channel. I started to learn Chinese back in 1994, but really haven't done anything for the past 20+ years. Your channel really motivates me to become an active learner of Chinese again. And as a German speaker myself I found this evaluation of Afu's Chinese skills quite interesting. The way you're pointing out the different aspects is just phenomenal. A big thumbs up for your work!
Love your videos! I think it would be really interesting if you analyzed the Olympic champion in badminton, Viktor Axelsen 安塞龙's Chinese. I'm Danish myself and would love to know what you think about his accent.
Whaaat, my language idol 阿福 doesn't speak perfect Chinese?! My life is shattered T_T Haha j/k, actually it's interesting to know that, because my Mandarin is not good enough yet to hear any "non-nativeness" in 阿福's Chinese. Anyways, thanks Fàn lǎoshī, your videos are always pretty detailed, technical, and educational. Really great resource, as I'm sure your new program will be!
I am from Germany and just started learning Chinese with the help of my friend from Taiwan. These different tones drive me crazy, but my friend has a lot of fun listening to my pathetic attempts. But she has the patience of a saint to teach me the correct pronunciation. We laugh a lot together. I really hope to get better at the language soon.
Hi! I used to studied linguistics in university in Germany. Apparently our language also does the voiceless sounds often in the "bdg" plosives. :) French language doesn't as far as I know but it might depend on the context of the sound.
Great video! I love to watch Thomas and I always thought his Chinese is perfect... Also, is there a way to take your class? I assume you teach at school, not online? I understand you may not have time...
You said your parents speak 晉 dialect, where are they from in Shanxi? My region (Yangquan) usually pronounces -an as -ae (nasalized) but merge the rest of -n into -ng like you described!
pinyin -n like french pinyin -ng like english i don't really speak italian but pinyin C may correspond to one of Italian C's pronunciations. Does equal Germn TS/TZ (which do sound different in German but you probably don't notice the difference).
The Chinese C is actually much more aspirated than German Z/TS, English C/TS and assumingly Italian C. Didn't dive into this too much, but I'll explain all details in my course for sure😁
Deutsch ist Deutlich ausgesprochen Initials are easier for Germans due to actually pronouncing words intently all the time with little or no liason. But German is also atonal. Some initials which exist in Chinese do not exist in English but also exist in German and German like Chinese has seperable verbs / particles of completion. German grammar of the European languages is closest to Chinese of non European languages Finno Ugric languages like Chinese feature post-positions, but still no cognates...
@@RitaChinese 例如, 看到 zusehen, zugesehen. I can easily replicate any of the separable verbs using a German structure (unlike other european languages where i can't).
Basically pinyin is a mix of european languages, X in pinyin is very close to X in Russian. Z pinyin like German Z etc. But Q doesn't have ANY European or Finno-Ugric counterpart.
I like his channel. But he always sounded funny to me . Of course I knew he was German . I try and watch alot of shows and mimic how they speak . Eventually ill take some lessons. I haven't focused on grammar so much as vocabulary. Most things I read at my level I understand by knowing most of the words but lately I been going back and doing more grammar. But chinese grammar doesn't feel too hard. But I also need to find a tutor cause I don't have anyone to speak with. Besides the occasional Chinese restaurant. Or the massage lady I go to . Im almost finished with hsk 4 . Its ok I know I need alot further to go but I surprise myself sometimes with what I can understand by listening intuitively.
Trying to learn chinese and was listening to an anime in German to see it in all language and it sounded a little like Chinese with certain phrases. I can only listen and learning to listen to both and not read or wright or anything.
You know what I would be interested in seeing as a video, if you had a linguist help you improve you on your accent in English, see if you feel that you got better or stay the same. No hate, just think it would make an interesting video.
Thank you so much, Brenda! It's a great idea and I've actually been thinking about it for a while! Just didn't get to do it, given so much time I'll have to put in. But it's definitely something I'll do whenever I can!
Yeah it's a good start to help people find their Chinese contour tones thinking in this way, and there's a long way to go when it comes to mastering the tones for each syllable💪💪
@@RitaChinese I waited until completing HSK5 to start actually pronouncing Chinese. It's much too easy for European language speakers to ruin tones. I'm hoping to at least get them right mostly. I've got great initials and finals so at least theres that.
@@QuizmasterLaw Wow that's not a common path of learning Chinese, but I'm curious about how it works out! At least I'm pretty sure that pronunciation and tones are something that you definitely can master as long as you wanna put in time and effort. Vocab and structures, on the other hand, are relatively innumerable.
@@RitaChinese The toughest part about Chinese is the near total absence of cognates. I intend to speak and read Chinese at a near native level. I did not want to drill lots of incorrect pronunciations. I doubt I can get to a native level but hope to eventually speak Chinese at least as well as you speak English. I am lazy, in a sense: pronunciation drills take time and effort, it's active learning. But as a newbie I knew I would make errors, not know it, and then reinforce them. My learning path was the right one (this is maybe my 8th language) 1) KANGXI RADICALS oh thank god i did them first 2) PICTOGRAMS 3) Hui Yi Zi and only then really get into the pictophonetic characters. I focused on learning vocabulary, primarily, with active understanding of the grammar, but only passive learning of tones and pronunciation until now. Even as I am now working on HSK6 there are still lots of words and hanzi to learn. But I feel I can and should also work on speaking. Chinese grammar in principle is easy. But the absence of cognates makes this language tougher.
7:34 sounds more English to me, as they pronounce the a as ä. A German would pronounce da as da, with a clear open a , not däor de.. maybe too much English influence in the teaching material? Especially since the German word 'da' exists, and it sounds exactly like the Chinese one. Means 'there'
though yeah a german native would want all tones to be level but at different "heights". The idea that the sound rises and falls or falls or rises is not really the way germans would think about tonality from the German language perspective.
Yeah I think European, at least Germanic language speakers share a similar tendency in terms of tones, but maybe because German vowels are usually shorter than English, if I didn't get it wrong, the rising and falling tones are more likely to be pronounced incomplete or be simplified as different pitch heights. Just my theory hahah
more tones = harder idk about grammar in principle if you can read mando should also be able to read canto and i watch some canto songs with subs and understand completely so idk