Believe it or not, Chinese Tones are so Easy! Most of our students can tell the difference and pronounce the four tones within 15 mins in our class. What is interesting that we found is when no one has a problem of pronouncing the four tones in a row, after learning the pitch graph, they all understand what pitch goes to what tone.
You see, many languages in the world have tones, take English for example, the emphasis on a syllable makes the same world different in meaning, like in “to record” and “music record”, moreover people use tones to express their emotions, like when you are angry, you tend to say “get out” in both strong falling tone, and when you mean it as a question, you say “shall we go out?” in a rising tone. So here you go, you got two tones sorted – rising tone (second) as “question tone”, and falling tone (fourth) as “angry tone” or in a joky way “the Japanese tone”.
It goes easy too if you follow the teacher to pronounce the flat tone (first) as a “singing tone” which you stay on the highest pitch, while the curve tone (third) as an “old man tone”, which you hit the very lowest pitch in your voice then rise up.
However, It’s only when saying tones in a row that a lot of students can’t seem to get the hang of tones accurately. And it’s rather common, not only for beginner but for even Intermediate students too. But we ensured you in our last post to say it’s not the end of the world if you are not pitch perfect, comparing to other Chinese dialect speakers, you might be even better. As a matter of fact, Chair Mao was speaking Chinese in very dialect-y style, everyone in the country understood him just well. Nonetheless, speaking a language also requires a context, that’s called communication. Even a few sounds are not perfect, under the context, people will know what words you try to say, you might just sound foreign, but it’s still a win!
Bottom line to study tones, you need a good teacher to explain to you how to distinguish the four tones, then go on to practice a lot single-sound words, after that, practice with tones in multiple syllables words or sentences, with your teacher to listen and help you correct from time to time. Once you get up to speed, record yourself saying a few sentences in Chinese, and play it to your Chinese friends, or just speak the sentences in front of your Chinese friends, see if they understand you. If they do, you will not have much problem in your communication in Chinese.
