How to remember the tones in Chinese, forever

[@drekaflugan]

'start off slowly, maintaining accuracy' i wish my pronunciation teacher understood that, he literally speaks at the speed of light

[@alexglase765]

I'm not even learning, but my Japanese studies led me to be curious about Asian languages... one of them being Chinese... so now I'm crazy interested in the tones.

[@mohammedelasri536]

Me too

[@mannya9823]

this video help me a lot, you are british but your english is so smooth and easy to understand.

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

Thanks!

[@neksfur]

u ccan tell he is well travelled.

[@ryanminnick347]

Honestly, tones just get easier to memorize in time. In the beginning it will feel like you have to learn two words in order to remember the tone. But in time, the tone just comes along with the word. Especially if you learn the words in sentences. e.g “我会说中文” I can't imagine being said "wo1 hui2 shuo4 zhong4 wen1"... it would just sound bizarre.

[@touka1669]

I'm too years late.. but yeah this is accurate xD

[@evaannavonbehne8605]

Thanks so much for all the work you have done making all these videos. You have made it possible for people like me who want to learn by myself to get a very straightforward, no nonsense start. You've taken the pain out of trying various ways of learning Mandarin so I don't have to waste time and money until I find a system that will work for me. Remembering the four Mandarin tones shouldn't be too difficult. In German, it is necessary to memorize the gender of each noun and its plural. You just get used to it. I suspect its the same with tones.

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

You're welcome ：-） Glad you have been inspired!

[@WCiossek]

Genau so ist es! Doch das Problem sind manchmal unsere Ohren, die Töne bei einen schnell sprechenden Chinesen herauszuhören. Besonders wenn die Wörter noch unbekannt sind. Ein Artikel vor einem Wort ist sehr deutlich zu hören, als auch die Pluralbildung. Doch der ständige Tonwechsel in einem Satz ist so, als würde man auf einer Gitarre immer neue Akkorde greifen. Da ist es besser, man prägt sich gängige Sätze mit der gesamten Satzmelodie ein.

[@user-om7gs1yl1g]

And plus im from china so why am i here? I was playing minecraft

[@azemyahcelestin8326]

好像在中国你不能用 KZbin

[@davidwinet5607]

Thanks. I find that listening to KZbin lessons at half speed or even 1/4 speed and stopping and listening again and then repeating and then listening again is helpful. Once I think I’ve got the pronunciation down I check it by going to Google translate and seeing if Google can’t understand what I said. If it does I help myself to another glass of beer!

[@DaXia333]

And I actually thought you had a method for remember the tones besides just "repeat until you remember". I will not down vote this video but the title is pretty damn misleading. It's like calling a video "How to lose weight" and the secret method is "Never eat anything ever again". Or "How to never feel sad again" and the method is "only do things that make you happy". It's like, duh.....yeah...we kind of already knew that....

[@alanmclauchlan7338]

He said you can associate the tones with feelings or colours.

[@chrismason8722]

Meanwhile in China you just hating because he's white and speaks better Chinese than you. Repeat after me, Panda, Panda, Express, Panda Express.

[@peepthesitchtarot]

It's not a misleading title if it actually works. It just isn't what you were hoping for. Don't be a sourpuss (:

[@user-ck8su5rz4r]

I also had a hard time with this when I began learning and repetition just wasn't doing it for me. so I came up with a method based on giving the tones meaning and creating associations with the characters. For a more in-depth explanation you can check it out here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nGKwapmafs2Sla8

[@gredangeo]

@@chrismason8722 What are you going on about with pandas?

[@sednalkram]

I agree--get it right from the beginning. Unfortunately you have to learn words/tones...but we speak in phrases so you have to integrate phrases into your memory eventually...

[@KACZMARCZYK4369]

KZbin is great for learning

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

:-)

[@paulwalther5237]

No more difficult to remember than the gender of nouns in languages like German or French? That's a relief to hear 😆

[@0MVR_0]

Per the issue of knowing the tone yet producing something that doesn't sound right, I use my finger or hand to physically adopt the shift in vowel intensity and help intonate my voice accordingly. This works esspecially well if you are reading or imagining the pinyin yet you can't keep up with how to change the supersegmental information.

[@user-zw7ke4vi3k]

It's quite interesting that each county in China has its unque tones neither in dialects of Mandarin or in dialects of any other Sinitic languages. Some have 3 tones, while some have 9. And the pitch of tone in each dialect is different. People from a neighboring county could hardly changed their mother tones into another during his entire life. So we can distinguish where a man come from by his tones! But one thing in common is that in each dialect the pitch of each tone really really count in meanings! So foreigners must know well about tones so that we can distinguish meanings. For instance in Mandarin “只是”“知识”“致使”“指示”“芝士”“直视”“志士”“枳实”“指使” are all "zhi shi" in Pinyin if we don't ephasize tones. A native Beijing Mandarin speaker can easily distinguish most of them by tones. While a native speaker 100Km away from Beijing talk to a Beijinger may cause confusion for their different pitch of tones

[@confusedmeee]

I downloaded pleco just now and practice a bit using the mic button. Thanks❤

[@anderski01]

You look like young Conan

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

Really?

[@anderski01]

Fluent in Mandarin.com Yeah man, it’s tripping me out lol.

[@thegoodspringguy]

Yeah, I see it too. Can you say "be cool my babies"?

[@bernhardrulla]

One of the very few videos that looks at how to remember the tones. 谢谢你！

[@pawoo666]

Pleco is god!

[@mt.spectra4427]

Thanks!

[@jhm6065]

Hi from Brasil. Thank you so much ! August 2021

[@chloebraithwaite377]

So essentially, your solution is... rote learn. Brilliant. Had never thought of that before.

[@lucalugano4497]

Chloé Braithwaite i didn't want to write that exactly but i like the smile of your profile picture by the way :D

[@johnwong8354]

Excellent advice! 很好的分享！🙂👍

[@espressochinese]

Very great. You really have something your own. I teach Chinese too and I think you understand Chinese very well. Keep doing it! I'd like to ask if you have a script in front of you or you just speak with your memory. Thanks

[@krishnagautam4995]

John Wang

[@espressochinese]

Yes, my friend. I am John Wang.

[@krishnagautam4995]

I want to learn chinese eagerly from Nepal. Would it be possible to receive help from you?

[@TheGhostPlanet]

Love the color tone idea. 😊

[@zoef9882]

我觉语音最难的是，需要变。这也是中国人非常容易辨别出非母语者的原因。不同语境，不同心情，不同上下文，不同目的，前后衔接不同，语调都会变。这也是外国人觉得特别难的原因。另外我们中国人学中文，想想看你们小时候做的最多的是啥，最多做的就是不断抄写，背诵，听写，默写，再背诵，抄写，听写，默写，要是外国人按照中国人这套学下去，中文一定好。但是外国人不乐意按照中国这套学呀。。。给他们开发轻松的教程又说中文难记不住还总结各种教程经验。真当我们母语者也是这么学的？我们母语者要按照外国人这套学下来，根本就学不好中文。背诵默写朗诵抄写不断不断抄写是学中文最重要的，我们义务教育阶段背过的文章段落名篇他们一百个外国人一辈子也背不了。只有背完了，朗诵完了，抄写默写听写完了，中文才算真学了。让他们背上十篇现代文吧，背完了，语调的毛病能治好一半。

[@NMalteC]

Only 4 tones plus neutral. They're not that difficult to learn. I'm doing Vietnamese, 5 tones plus neutral. Still manageable. Once you learn the word, you've learned its tone. Else you haven't learned the word. Easy, right?

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

Generally it takes a couple of times to remember it fully, our brains don't always remember things in one go, but as you say, it's not that hard.

[@beardan76]

Most of this is on the money but i didnt start using tones with Cantonese until i was ready. And for me that was 12 months. Luckily, the tones are not hard for me to remember cause my memory for numbers is not bad and remember tones as in numbers 1-6. The earlier you start with tones the better but you need to as an individual be ready and confident to use it.

[@RustedNation]

Very insightful. Thank you very much 😊

[@hqrsyd]

Hey Chris, Love your Channel. Mandarin Chinese is the second most used language here in Australia besides English... I have a question about tones: Is there any particular rule on an objects tone pattern, For example anything to express excitement would be a rising tone, Is it kept in that structure for all future words? Or it's just a matter of memorizing the tone for the given word. My memory bank is full already lol

[@Nilguiri]

Good advice. Thanks, Chris.

[@catboy721]

But in normally-spoken Mandarin (at speed), don't the individual tones blend together? My problem is that connecting one tone to the next at speed is really difficult. Can you really hear each individual up & done when you hear spoken chinese at speed?

[@2kyle7magic]

+catboy721 i think usually in very fast conversations, the tone is kind of blended a little bit, which isn't much of a problem if you can pick up the context of the speech to figure out the word. Tone is essential to understand chinese but there is also other factors here to aid that process. In fact I think its essential to try and fit words in context subconsciously for ANY language, and even native speaker of mandarin has some confusion once a while

[@Mcdonaldrod75]

On another video, they discuss two acceptable pronunciations for 3rd tone. I have never heard of this before but it makes sense. sometimes it's really hard to hear the difference between second and third tone.

[@tibology]

TL;DR: 1 Practice. 2 Look it up if you forget. (:/...)

[@TheGretaoto]

Simply perfect! 感谢🙏🏽

[@job187]

Great advice. Thanks!

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

+job187 You're very welcome

[@sokhongchea639]

It help me thanks

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

You're welcome!

[@42Love4music]

Thanks. I'm focusing more on listening now - can you give me a suggestion for TV.?

[@asahel980]

Wow youre British accent is quite sexy , I know british accent is sexy but yours are quite distinctive for me at least.

[@cooliipie]

You must be American

[@farntf1647]

How many tones would you say you usually get wrong? (a percentage maybe_

[@WoangLuh]

"drill them into your head?" Ooh! That must hurt, especially with an electric drill. Maybe a hypodermic would hurt less? "Inject them into your head" sounds much less aggressive!"

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

Yeah, try not to make it too painful!

[@joylynsmith6500]

I want to be fluent in mandarin (:

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

You can do it!

[@crnacz]

Did you do it?

[@lifeon2feets91]

@@crnacz hopefully

[@rdu239]

I have issues with 3rd tone, how exactly is it really sound? In my language center I was taught that is a lower then raising sound like how you write the letter V, but in the other vids here in youtube it is an low "uhh" sound.

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

It can sound more like a 'low tone' in practice. It depends what other tones it comes in combinations with, but essentially there is nothing wrong with learning it as a falling then rising tone, this is also how it is taught in China, and be aware that it can be shortened in practice according to the specific usage. Most of the changes happen naturally in speech.

[@SoroushTorkian]

Lol I followed you on douyin.... Didn't know you were here.

[@pokmanlai3199]

hi

[@johnroekoek12345]

Songs don't have tones. I think whispering a sentence is what I am going to try, if I am not shure.

[@FluentinMandarinDotCom]

That's right, and you can also say words with no particular tone sometimes to 'hedge your bets' if you can't remember the tone. That's better than saying it with the wrong tone and maybe causing a misunderstanding.

[@shuichiromatsuda5712]

I can memorize Korean manner of reading the Chinese characters but I can't Mandarin because of the tones.

[@neroravtong]

Why the hack in the world yb recommand this video to me? a native Chinese speaker

[@natureaiaiai880]

tones are hard to learn

[@bidenisthebestpresidentlma4141]

This dude is so robotic like. No emotions no expressions... nothing.

[@laurataylor6423]

His explanation is too wordy and boring. Not enough real life examples.

[@user-om7gs1yl1g]

Speak too fast but I'm also a super fast speaker so i can hear you.

[@MrGold-lo6vc]

Summary: Just f*?$%ing memorise them. 😄

[@adrianm.e.1342]

bla bla bla bla the video content does not corresponde to the description...

[@jessicapreble7963]

lol

[@gabrielab6133]

gay

[@yoytu863]

Gabi, você vem aqui só pra insultá-lo?

[@natalyshastel7093]

is he reading?

[@faisaya412]

Nataly Shastel yeah i think so

[@0obombrezuduo048]

No he's staring into our souls.

[@natalyshastel7093]

@@0obombrezuduo048 it's not possible stare into my soul and talking about Mandarin, you know what I mean....