Syllable Mimicry
The very first skill you learned in this course was the articulation of each Mandarin syllable. Now that you have some practical experience with these syllables through song training, you should have expectation. In other words, you should never hear a Mandarin sound or syllable that is new to you, since we've already covered every possible one.
As simple a concept as this is, it's actually very important. Sometimes you will not hear sounds clearly, so your brain will have to rely on an innate knowledge of Mandarin possibilities to determine what the sound was. This is why we spent so much time on this at the beginning of the course. Now, we are going to spend some time developing this ability by listening to normal speed Mandarin speech.
Below there are three different monologues of about a minute length each.
As simple a concept as this is, it's actually very important. Sometimes you will not hear sounds clearly, so your brain will have to rely on an innate knowledge of Mandarin possibilities to determine what the sound was. This is why we spent so much time on this at the beginning of the course. Now, we are going to spend some time developing this ability by listening to normal speed Mandarin speech.
Below there are three different monologues of about a minute length each.
- With either your computer's text editor or a paper and a pen, listen closely to the text and transcribe each syllable to pinyin.
- This will take you some time and several replays of the audio clips, but the level of attention you will need to dedicate to this task will do a lot to develop your syllabic perception.
- Do not move on to the next page until you have transcribed and double checked everything. The answers will be on the next page.
Syllable Mimicry: Exercise 1
Syllable Mimicry: Exercise 2
Syllable Mimicry: Exercise 3