Kim Kardashian's HACK for Mastering Chinese Tones (2024)

Happy 2024, everyone! Rita aka Fàn Lǎoshī is back. Eliminate your robotic Mandarin speech and find your own personality in 28 days with our "Finding Your Mandarin Voice" Intonation Boot Camp: www.ritachinese.com/
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Discover what you need to find your Mandarin voice, and FINALLY hear natives clearly and sound natural in Chinese!
This is a video that I've been wanting to make for a long long time, and for some ridiculous reason, I have to re-upload it now. In the video, I talked about:
0:00-3:21 How the Chinese 3rd tone affects and changes other tones
3:22-4:07 What Chinese 3rd tone is really like
4:08-7:21 What we should learn from Kim Kardashian
7:22-9:57 How to practice Chinese tones for real
Like always, you are more than welcome to leave a COMMENT with the questions about Chinese pronunciation that you have, or your story about Mandarin and language learning!
Hit the LIKE or SHARE with your Chinese-learning friends if you learned something from my videos! It motivates me to make all these years' experience, research, and reflection into educational videos that take so much time and effort to make.
Anyways, remember: with Fàn Lǎoshī, Chinese makes perfect sense!
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🙌Chinese Tidbits on Instagram: / rita_mandarin_chinese
😎Personal Account: / rita_van

[@DadInTaiwan]

Before I moved to Taiwan 15 years ago, I tried studying Mandarin a bit in the US. All the textbooks and online info I saw taught the 3rd tone as dipping then rising--but none of them explained that this only happens in some situations and that normally it's just a low falling tone. When I got to Taiwan and started hearing real Chinese in everyday life, I immediately heard the reality but I kept wondering if I was actually hearing it correctly because of what the "expert" textbooks said. After learning how to really pronounce the third tone, Mandarin pronunciation became much easier for me. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain this so thoroughly!

[@RitaChinese]

You have good ears! Many teachers and textbooks have long ignored the linguistic facts, and it’s a shame that the teaching method/content has caused so much confusion and trouble for students. It needs to be changed!

[@specificsoup]

I was looking at this video title thinking Kim Kardashian was studying Chinese 😅 But thank you so much, that was extremely helpful actually. I can hear how it’s “technically” a falling rising tone because when you make that vocal fry type low sound, it sort of wavers.. like I think it naturally kind of dips and rises, just not very drastically, so it is hard to hear when not emphasized. So explaining this way makes it sooo much clearer

[@shalbic]

I am glad to see that you redid this very helpful video. I didn't really care for the way it was done the last time. I can tell that you are passionate about teaching correctly, and you are a fantastic teacher, so let your work speak for you without stepping on others, as was done the last time. Thank you for your hard work.

[@RitaChinese]

Thanks! Glad you’ve been watching and enjoying my videos❤️ More are coming!

[@JustJulia-qt9nh]

Kind of a back handed compliment 🙃

[@shalbic]

Well, you can choose to see it that way, but I thought it was a sign of maturity on Fan laoshi's part. I admired that, and I wanted to encourage her to make more videos like this. It's also why I decided to get her course. ​@@JustJulia-qt9nh

[@leoyang7999]

Actualy when you speak the 3rd tone charactor alone, it does have a rising end， like 我。but when it is followed by a second charactor like 我们，then it loses the rising end. It becomes a flat low pitch Wo

[@MarkusBlue]

So excited that Rita is back! Such great content on this channel! Everyone should check these videos out!!

[@maialso6096]

you are super talented at making Chinese language simple and fun at the same time. I really enjoy your videos and appreciate you taking the time on making such high quality videos.

[@ihsaan786]

Amazing lesson!!🎉

[@Slothian-ry3hf]

Yay! A new video! I subscribed to you a bit ago and have been anticipating this one 😂

[@maiq.789]

Very interesting! Once at a home party several friends asked us to say happy new year in our different mother toughs and when I said 新年快乐 everyone was crazy about my low voice, as if I'm a whole new person 😂

[@RitaChinese]

Haha interesting! Why do you have a lower voice when speaking Chinese? Is it because of the 3rd tone??

[@newcreation1cor517]

I speak in a lower voice when I speak to northern Chinese speakers, and a higher voice when I speak to southern Chinese speakers 😂 I speak somewhere in the middle in English. Did you learn Chinese in northern China/from a northern Chinese speaker?

[@magdolnavida2717]

And also interesting that 新年快乐 doesn't even have low tone 😂 anyway, the thing really exists that if you speak in a different language or use your mother tongue, you sounds totally differently...when I speak English I also sound deeper than my original voice...😊

[@Atticus113]

Thank you Rita, this makes so muck sense to me. I just started learning and noticed that at regular talking speed this basically became a vocal fry dip compared to a fall and rise. Trying to pronounce a whole rise and fall into the next tone was stupid hard, so I'm glad to hear this is the right way. Would you please confirm something for me? If you have a 2 or more 3rd tone words in a row like 我很好 the first 2 become 2nd tones, right? 太谢谢了！

[@JustJulia-qt9nh]

谢谢 ☺️ 这个视频又超级实用又超级好用！

[@jjamo1225]

Good thank you

[@newcreation1cor517]

I am so glad that I learned phonetics before I studied Chinese! I had in total less than 20 official lessons, and I generally led them all, so I focused on listening to natural language more than many, perhaps. I thought it was strange that all the pictures and books pointed to 3rd tone rising at the end, when it was very clear after just learning 你好 that this was not the case. Also, I thought it was super interesting that people almost exclusively used creaky voice/vocal fry while saying words with the third time. 谢谢你的帮忙！你的视频都很有意思。以后，会不会有全普通话视频？我现在住在美国的一座小城市，没有很多机会听说中文。

[@RitaChinese]

谢谢分享你的经验！也很开心你喜欢我的视频😊 I’ll keep doing the full-Chinese interviews with Mandarin learners, and I’ll start a video podcast series soon🙌

[@Nandinandito]

I feel like ever since I learned how to do the 3rd tone, I'm doing the vocal fry in English all the time 😅

[@RitaChinese]

Haha that’s an unexpected side effect of our training😆

[@briantomoconnor]

Excellent! The good folks at Mandarin Blueprint call the third tone, "the zombie tone" for exactly this reason that you mention. It descends into a croaky sound (i.e., vocal fry).

[@CrisTryingToBeProductive]

I didn't even know that was a thing, from day my teacher explained us how the third tone works correctly.

[@raisgamesnz325]

I'm lucky the very first video I happened to watch about Mandarin happened to say this same thing, that it is NOT usually a dipping rising tone. So I didn't waist time doing it wrong. :) Thank you for your good video like normal, :)

[@RitaChinese]

Glad you liked my videos! Learning the 3rd tone correctly definitely makes a huge difference in students’ tone learning and even the whole learning process!

[@raisgamesnz325]

I still have a long way to go, but I can see myself slowly improving! You are so good at teaching Chines, and your very positive attitude is really encouraging when I get discouraged!@@RitaChinese

[@na_neh1313]

thank;s for your video, your viedos are always useful, 老师. but how to identify the tones in the midlie of the sentence

[@tommyc139]

Rita thats interesting vocal dry in English is very hard

[@Slothian-ry3hf]

Also, is 我很好 all third tone? Or does 我 change to second tone because it's two third tones?

[@leoyang7999]

Also I think there is no falling part. it is just started with a low pitch

[@loislindsay]

Do swordsman 3 the east is red in Cantonese plz

[@foxybrown2]

when learning Mandarin I hear them teach the tones but when people speak i don't hear any of that even from Native speakers.

[@tommyc139]

Do swordsman 2 in mandarin plz

[@RitaChinese]

Is there a Mandarin speaking part?!

[@tommyc139]

@@RitaChinese yes

[@loislindsay]

I think that Chinese language are way faster than English for sure

[@Blogcovay]

great knowledge, but I think you can make this video a lot shorter

[@pauliusnarkevicius9959]

I know that Chinese is faster than English x2 times for sure.

[@RitaChinese]

Haha interesting! What makes you think that? 🤔

[@newcreation1cor517]

Probably depends on where you speak English...

[@pauliusnarkevicius9959]

@@RitaChinese I just feel that this should be like previous statement!

[@RitaChinese]

@@pauliusnarkevicius9959 I think it also depends on the information density and personal speaking habits

[@artugert]

If you are talking about Classical Chinese (which is only written and wouldn’t necessarily be completely understood if spoken) then yes it is. Otherwise, it is about the same.