An Introduction to Mandarin Tones
Mastering the tones will be your biggest challenge in Mastering the Flow of Mandarin. As a highly tonal language, Mandarin relies heavily on pitch variation when communicating meaning. What this means is that the relative pitch of your voice when saying a syllable or group of syllables will partly determine its meaning.
This concept is strange to English speakers, but it should not be, since English is a tonal language as well.
The inflection of your voice (i.e. relative pitch variation) will communicate many important things like emotion and irony. It's also important for differentiating questions from statements (e.g. "It's you?" vs. "It's you!").
The reason we think of Mandarin as "Tonal" is because pitch variation plays a larger role in determining meaning.
This concept is strange to English speakers, but it should not be, since English is a tonal language as well.
The inflection of your voice (i.e. relative pitch variation) will communicate many important things like emotion and irony. It's also important for differentiating questions from statements (e.g. "It's you?" vs. "It's you!").
The reason we think of Mandarin as "Tonal" is because pitch variation plays a larger role in determining meaning.
The Handicap to Overcome
When approaching the challenge of tonal mastery, you need to be aware of two very important things:
Mandarin students get discouraged when they do not immediately hear the differences between the tones. They will attribute it to "Tone-Deafness" or some other innate inability of theirs to appreciate Chinese languages, as if the ability to speak Chinese was pre-written into everyone's genetic codes.
Actually, researchers have measured the signals emitted by the auditory cortex and found that the untrained mind will simply fail to perceive any difference in tones.
But there is hope. The reason English speakers are insensitive to Chinese tones is because they play absolutely no role English, so your brain think to process these differences. But as you should know by now, you can build this sensitivity through Flow Training.
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- If you have little or no previous experience with Mandarin tones, you will NOT be able to hear a difference.
- With enough exposure and attention to detail, you CAN develop an appreciation for tones very quickly.
Mandarin students get discouraged when they do not immediately hear the differences between the tones. They will attribute it to "Tone-Deafness" or some other innate inability of theirs to appreciate Chinese languages, as if the ability to speak Chinese was pre-written into everyone's genetic codes.
Actually, researchers have measured the signals emitted by the auditory cortex and found that the untrained mind will simply fail to perceive any difference in tones.
But there is hope. The reason English speakers are insensitive to Chinese tones is because they play absolutely no role English, so your brain think to process these differences. But as you should know by now, you can build this sensitivity through Flow Training.
Next>>
