Why You Can't Hear Chinese Tones

[@DavidWuMandarin-o1d]

3:00 colour analogy is great for acquiring tone categories.

[@enricobrasil]

Every language has pitch. The difference is that in Western languages it's a sentence pitch rather than word pitch.

[@LilyUnicorn]

Not even sentence pitch. Its emotional inflection. You can speak english completely in monotone and be understandable.

[@YuriyVashurin]

My level of Chinese is relatively high (HSK 6), however, it's still hard to me sometimes to recognize tones in the fast speech. My brain just doesn't catch up :D

[@RichTCS]

Thanks!

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Thank you for your support! 🥰

[@lisas900]

I would love more videos about this subject 😊

[@qazsedcft2162]

I always wondered how Chinese people whisper. Can you still understand when someone is not using their voice at all?

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

I remember seeing research on this topic! If there’s enough interest, I might look into it one day 😂

[@ragdoll86]

@@GraceMandarinChinesethat would be a very interesting topic! 😀

[@jessylin1234]

As a native speaker, I personally find it very hard to understand whispers in Chinese, however most friends around me seem to not have this problem haha

[@xuexizhongwen]

See 21:07 on a video called "(Pt 2)The SECRET to Perfect Mandarin Tone Pronunciation" by Julesytooshoes. She mentions near the end of part 1 (the video before that one) that tones don't just have different pitch contours, but they also differ in time duration and intensity. For example, tone 3 is the quietest, and tone 2 goes from quiet at the beginning to louder at the end. While listening to whispering, people will pay attention to these other cues, in addition to pitch contour. But there still is pitch contour when whispering, too. It's just less obvious, since the range between the highest and lowest pitch is smaller.

[@zoolity]

Please make more tone tests please :) Thank you for a great video!

[@Aries61]

Thank you Grace! I am a beginner and it’s a bit overwhelming…. but interesting!

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

加油！You can do it! 💪

[@damajeinc6295]

I don't know if this would be more advanced than what you are thinking, but I never had too much trouble with identifying isolated tones (occasionally I mix up 2 and 3). Where my difficulties came in was with tone pairs. I wonder if a video testing perception of tone pairs might be useful for others, especially since pairs of tones are the vast majority of what one will encounter in actual Chinese speech.

[@mkk3a]

Do you have any play on words, or jokes, or memes etc. about similar words like to kiss and to ask (0:21)? Or do you perceive them as so different that you can't even imagine that someone could confuse them?

[@woodies2009]

I've just remembered when I was studying Chinese at uni. In my first Chinese class, the teacher from Beijing got a tone practice done just for 5 MINUTES. And as for Pinyin, he didn't teach it enough, either😂 Looking back on it now, this is insane😂

[@kimbim0843]

Thanks Grace - Hope you could create more tone tests as you did in your previous video (please)😊

[@genace]

Really interesting to hear this from such a scientific and scholarly perspective! I can tell you researched this topic a lot for your thesis. Best wishes for your upcoming course!!!💪💪 btw are the second and third tones switched at 2:39? I’m hearing 2 as the third tone and 3 as the second tone. Or am I just hearing this wrong?👀

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Oh haha at 2:39 I wasn’t planning to say the four tones, I just randomly pronounced different pitches 😂

[@genace]

@@GraceMandarinChinese Ah ok😂 That makes sense haha

[@jonaramire]

Superb vid' ! Been in Taïwan last week, a bit diificult to understand some stuffs ^^'

[@ferryrustandi944]

It would be much appreciated if you teach a course on Chinese grammar too. Some people say that Chinese grammar is simpler than English grammar and that if you have no problem with English grammar, then you won’t have any problem with Chinese grammar. But somehow I always find Chinese grammar confusing. When I read a sentence in Chinese, I usually compare the grammar to English grammar and I almost always find the word order in Chinese is not the same as that in English and there are many words in the Chinese sentence that I think are redundant because I wouldn’t say it that way in English. In the end, I’m just confused 🥺

[@chaunguyen2239]

@@ferryrustandi944 it's pretty much similar to English grammar, no need to worry about it. Just learn at a relaxing pace and ask whenever a question arises. Also never compare this language against that language, it will hinder the learning process. Each language each own 世界

[@chiaradileo]

I have a lot of difficulty recognizing the first and second tone, I struggle to understand the difference

[@Bai_Su_Zhen]

I try to understand it as first tone is like being indifferent, second tone is normally asking a question, third tone is carefully asking a question and fourth tone is responding to a question.

[@chiaradileo]

@@Bai_Su_Zhen oh thanks

[@cactustactics]

Ok, bearing in mind I'm a beginner, here's my little theory from what I've noticed - just in case it helps others to make sense of what they're hearing! (Not saying I'm right, just that it might help - also this ended up a lot longer than I meant) So every syllable (e.g. wǒ, xiǎng, yī, shì) has two sound parts - these might line up with the initial and final, I'm not sure! But for me, it helps to think of each syllable as having two sounds, the start one and the end one, even when they're really short. The rising (2nd) tone starts with a low sound, then ends with a high one - da-DA. Because they're different, there's a glide between them, and that'll naturally come if you say the two separate sounds. Same deal for the falling (4th) tone, it's just high-low, DA-da. So shàng would be SHA-ng, qù is CHU-u, hé is hu-EH etc. (Some of this involves sounds moving between the back or front of your mouth too I think! But let's not get into that too) The high (1st) tone has two sounds too - but they're both high! Instead of letting your voice fall, you have to keep it up there. It's kinda sing-songy and unnatural for me (probably because we generally don't do it in English) and that's why it stands out. Same deal for actually saying it - think of two sounds, but they're both at the same pitch. So for a 1st tone word like yī it's like saying EE-EE even though it comes out as one sound. (Treating them all consistently as two parts helps me, this one just happens to be high-high) The 3rd tone's a little sneaky because the first sound is a drop and the second one is a rise, but it's the same idea. The sort of creak/fry helps you spot that one, and for me putting a brief stop in there gets a similar sound, like drop-stop-rise. (This one's also tricky because if you get a few of them in a row, they're all rising 2nd tones apart from the last syllable) The other thing I've noticed is the "first sound" in each syllable is often the important one. You might get a rising 2nd tone where you don't actually hear the high part, so it just sounds like a low syllable instead of one that moves up, if that makes sense. So a "rising" tone can sound "low", and a "falling" tone can sound "high", just because of where they start. That singsongy sustained high is what makes the 1st tone sound different to the falling one in this case I know there's more to it than that, like how it's not really just "high" and "low" and there are places inbetween where different tones sit. In my experience that's not always consistent though, just because of how normal speech flows - I've heard high tones sound lower than others in some sentences, which will get less important with familiarity, but it can make things tricky right now! So this is just stuff I've noticed that helps me if I keep it in mind. If you got this far sorry it was this long!

[@MMmk1]

1:12 That "But hear me now" was soooo native-English-speaker-like. Congratulations, Grace

[@kaiserreich1914]

Make more hearing practice, pls. I'm studying in China right now, really interested in learning Chinese as fast as I can

[@zacharysancartier3454]

I hope this video clears* up any confusion.

[@은주2011아미]

Hi teacher thank you so much. Can you make a video on family members in Chinese mothers and fathers side both please 😊😊😊😊

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Thanks for the suggestion!

[@은주2011아미]

@@GraceMandarinChinese so will you make?

[@flaviosouza4449]

Amazing video

[@hakohito]

I keep calling my mom a horse 😢

[@shatzco]

Wahahahaha

[@coolbrotherf127]

I call your mom a horse too, but probably got different reasons

[@hexcitrine]

for real speech, my brain can't go "ah yes that's a second tone followed by a first tone" but it can go "ah that person said shui but it's not 水, it doesn't quite like 水". i'm able to pick up on a general rhythm to words i've heard in speech a lot. my tone discrimination is not super there yet (sure, i can perfectly identify tones when TTS reads out a single word, but for real speech, it's a whole different context), but i'm happy that my subconscious is at least picking up on differences after a lot of listening

[@SupremeMaster-he4rc]

Actually, the tone situation is a bit deeper. Depending on the dialect of Mandarin and the speaker, "tone realization" will vary. Cognitive dissonance results when some Chinese language teachers tell HSK1-2 students exactly what they're supposed to be hearing no matter how many Chinese people they've heard. In the Beijing dialect, the tones are exaggerated but when you go to other dialects, like the one in Sichuan, you may even hear more than four tones! Chinese people on Quora, stack exchange and reddit will tell you the same thing. Wikipedia even mentions this concept of tone realization. I've listened to hundreds of Chinese videos and compared the speech to subtitles and can easily see the tones are spoken a little differently depending on the mandarin dialect. This is one reason why maybe 95% of Chinese videos are subtitled. Many Chinese depending on the dialect may have trouble understanding each other 100%. So pronunciation, vocabulary, tone realization and grammar all play a part in mandarin comprehension. Mandarin Melon, who has worked with Grace and her friends before had very good advice on her own website. She basically said she'll teach 1,000 common words to start off with. She's right! Words like 中國 China, 警察police and 圖書館 library are so common, you'd have to speak them like a space alien to screw them up or not understand them by hearing. For a long time, I was listening for a particular tone sound (Beijing dialect) and combo and rarely hearing it like I thought I was supposed to. Then I realized that depending on the dialect and speaker, I'm not going to hear all the vocal acrobatics because there's necessarily no need. After I did all my own research etc, and practice, I finally could understand what most Chinese people were saying. But I had to understand the concept of tone idealism vs. Tone realization before I had my breakthrough. I realized that blue (for ex. One dialect Beijing---- Exaggerated) and green (another dialect central mandarin) make purple (tones more "subtle" that can be used to understand both dialects) with the 1,000+ common words as an anchor/standard to test by and real Chinese character subtitles (not those weak ones with the pinyin on top) on videos (for actual Chinese people and not for students) as a check along with a Chinese friend to boot for more help. Score! This system worked for me. I don't know about others. Peace. 🤔

[@SophianFee]

I am not sure what @enrico means that "every language has pitch" and "Western language is a sentence pitch and not word pitch". The speaker is teaching that Chinese is a tonal language and when you change the tone of a word, the meaning is changed. However the pitch of the word can change, but the meaning generally remains. English is not a tonal language. Changing the tone makes the word meaningless. However, changing pitch of the word, or more accurately, stressing the vowel sound of the word can change the intent of the word, even though the meaning remains. Take the verbs "can" and "walk". If you say, "can you walk?" you can ask the question politely by stressing the vowel sounds in "can" or "walk" by raising the volume, pitch (not tone) and duration slightl. If you don’t, then you sound like asking rhetorically and in a condescending manner. Note that you do not raise the pitch of the sentence or every word in the sentence. You only stress the vowel sound of either can or walk. Also, vowel sounds in question can be stressed differently in different countries. Take the word "Really?". In US, the stress is typically on the end sound "ly". In UK, the stress is on the vowel sound of"real". In Indonesia, Bahasa is spoken with highs and lows, and stress on the "r" sounds unlike Bahasa in Malaysia, which is flatter. It does not mean sentences spoken in Indonesia Bahasa have pitch and those in Malaysia don’t. Spoken Bahasa Indo may be influenced by Javanese culture, may be more expressive, but they are also influenced by Grammar. Indonesian stresses the "ter" with a strong "r" sound unlike Malaysians. Ter is used preceding an adjective to denote superlative. Take the word besar (big). In English, we say bigger, biggest. In Bahasa, we use "lebih besar" and "terbesar". Ter is also used before a verb to denote accident or abnormality. Jatoh means fall (as in water falling from sky) but if it is caused by an accident, we say terjatoh. So, Indonesians typically stressed certain sounds to communicate great difference or abnormality. This is similar to the Korean language. That does not mean their sentences have pitch. There may be other reasons but I am not a linguist. Again, the spoken Khmer (Cambodian) language sounds like it has pitches, with its melodic ups and downs when in fact, it is not a tonal language. It has 23 "tom"(big) and 23 "toit" (small) vowel sounds, with dipthongs and tripthongs, and the vowel sounds are very similar and they change when the end consonant changes (much like Cantonese). They also have Voice Consonant exlposive stop sounds in words beginning with P, K, and C. P'chumben (7th month), Kh'neum (I) and Ch'ran (many). Taken together, spoken Khmer sounded melodic and rhythmic but they do not have pitch. Now, why do I take such a big round to explain tone and pitch? The reality is that language is such a complex study that we should be careful not to make simplistic statement. I am no linguist, but I share what I learnt from linguists. And I mean no offence to to "correct" anyone. Thanks.

[@sapinordinaire4484]

For my part speaking french, is more that i won't recognise the changr because i think you are telling the same thing but playing with the tone you tell it. We use to play with the tone for the same signification , expressing the emotions so it's more like this

[@Lethah]

In English we pronounce consonants. They are especially strong at the end of words. . Apparently your native language does not stress them. Some are lacking when you speak. You often do not pronounce T or Ch. Each language and family of languages has its challenges. We appreciate the clarity of your explanations and examples showing grammar.

[@niket527]

Make a vid about the fifth tone please because it changes based on what's before it

[@chaunguyen2239]

anyone like me can't differentiate between 1st and 4th tone?

[@samstromberg5593]

1st and 2nd for me

[@sleepyy1x]

2nd and 3rd for me lol

[@cactustactics]

I posted a big ol' comment under someone else's about stuff that helps me, but the 1st tone has this sustained high sound to it, 4th starts high and drops - but you might not hear the drop, so it just sounds high. But not in the same "I'm singing" kinda way as the 1st tone. 2nd rises but starts low, and in a similar way you might just hear the low bit. 3rd tone has that signature vocal fry and just sounds low-key compared to other syllables Are y'all practicing saying this stuff? Like listening to words and trying to copy the tones exactly. It can really help your brain make connections and make it easier to hear those nuances, and it helps you remember what words sound like too (so you don't even need to think about tones, you just kinda know how it sounds). If you're not doing that, I'd really recommend trying it

[@chaunguyen2239]

@@cactustactics it's just I'm Vietnamese and we have 6 different tones, so Chinese 2nd and 3rd tone are just pieces of cake, but i still can't differentiate between first and 4th Chinese tone, although I've mastered the Chinese language already. So i find it fascinating how others can tell the difference though 😁😁

[@cactustactics]

@@chaunguyen2239 huh, that's interesting! Do the 1st and 4th tones sound kinda like the tones you're used to, but in a way where they don't really match one in particular, so they don't have a clear "identity" and feel a bit vague? Just to be clear, for me personally I can't always tell, and I think in normal speech the tones aren't always consistent, and it sometimes depends on the flow and tone of the sentence itself, or the other syllables around the one you're focusing on. I'm only a beginner really but I've definitely noticed that inconsistency, which is pretty normal for any language! So I think it's as least partly about knowing what's being said, and knowing what the tones for those words ~should be~, and not always about actually hearing them. I can definitely hear them in a formal "here's a word: sān" situation - but for me that tone especially is an unnatural way to speak, if you're used to a tonal language it probably doesn't stick out as much I'm guessing!

[@NickvonZ]

EXCELLENT! Virgo Power!

[@LilyUnicorn]

Considering I need a whole octave to hear any difference in loudness, i assure you all i am quite tone deaf. I use syllable length (how long it takes fo say that syllable) to determine which tone they are using. The third tone takes the longest to say. 4th tone is super quick. 2nd tone takes longer than 1st. They all sound the same to me so im screwed if they only say less than 3 syllables.😂😂😂😂😂

[@chpt.12]

do you have any movies/shows that can help us learn chinese? 😭🙏

[@derickrodriguez5797]

English does have a pitch pattern, its just up -> down, up -> down. We just ignore it in our day-to-day speaking but its there.

[@schuetzer]

Tones in tonal languages are different to pitch patterns. For native speakers, they're essentially to mark different words.

[@samstromberg5593]

I mean kind of. Like we use it but it doesn't matter. If you didn't use it I'm still totally able to understand you and it doesn't change the meaning at all

[@QuizmasterLaw]

yeah, iambs english is iambic pentameter. tone is however present in english as a grammatical marker. fourth tone for imperative, e.g. NO! Second tone for questions e.g. Well? We don't really have a grammar use for the first and tone but they can be observed.

[@izzi437]

tonal languages have lexical tone, so tone is used to differentiate between specific words. in languages like english, changes in pitch are usually across different levels of the phrase or sentence, and yes, we kind of process this automatically so it’s not something we would notice unless you’re looking out for it! in linguistics, there’s usually a distinction between lexical/phonemic tone (at the word level) vs. intonation (at the phrase/sentence level). intonation in english is studied a bunch in kind of more social uses of language, for example discourse analysis. it’s really neat :)

[@cactustactics]

@@izzi437 you can also notice it when someone gets it wrong though, because it creates a rhythmic pattern that we're familiar with - part of the reason you can sometimes tell what people are saying through a wall! I feel like it's a big part of why non-native speakers can struggle to be understood sometimes - you can use the "correct" sounds with the wrong stress patterns and be understood (feels weird though), and you can use the correct pattern with the "wrong" sounds (i.e. an accent), but if both the sounds and the rhythm don't match it's suddenly a lot more work for the listener because your brain doesn't have anything familiar to latch onto

[@ponaskompetencija]

I found out just now that I'm far away from bein tone deaf, I'm an 24/7 infant with everything enhanced. I'm Batman.

[@3ton157]

yeah, more chinese audio tests videos

[@Friedbrain11]

I have no problem with the first 3 tones. It is the fourth one that I cannot distinguish from the first one. I listened carefully and it seems even you are not following along with the scribe as to how it sounds. Your fourth tone does not drop off as it is seen with the scribe mark...hmmm.

[@floatingFuZi]

2:40 老師，這邊的二聲跟三聲聽起來有點奇怪，建議重錄

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

那邊並不是四個聲調哦！只是要讓大家隨機聽聽不同的音高，確認自己是聽得到音高差異的

[@a.disaster2324]

i still dont get the tone changes。 would 吻你 not have a tone change because 2 third tones?

[@chaunguyen2239]

@@a.disaster2324 yes

[@Danpungip]

thats probably why older individuals have a hard time speak with the right accent in another language

[@cactustactics]

From trying to pay close attention to this stuff, I feel like Chinese speakers don't always ~use~ the tones exactly? Like they can end up dropped here and there in normal speech, similar to how in English we can elide syllables (or even drop entire words), so sometimes it's more about the flow of the speech rather than accuracy for every single word. Is that accurate, or are they ~always~ definitely there, and it's just too subtle for me to really hear sometimes?

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

You have a really good observation! This is actually part of what I’m covering in my online course. I’ll talk about sound reduction and how native speakers pronounce tones in connected speech. If you want to stay updated on my course, just send me an email (typing “New course info please” in the subject line will be fine) 😉

[@cactustactics]

@@GraceMandarinChinese ok I'm glad it's not just me! Going from formal "correct" speech to how people actually talk, and knowing which rules you can break and when is always the trickiest part. 谢谢!

[@xuexizhongwen]

The tones are always pronounced. There may be two reasons why beginners don't perceive it that way: 1. You might be expecting each tone to be the same exact pitch every time it's pronounced, but that is not the case. They are relative pitch contours. For example, multiple fourth tones in a row will not start and end at the same absolute pitch. That would sound ridiculous. For a good explanation of this with examples, see the video called "Secrets to Perfect Chinese Pronunciation" on the channel "Chinese with Ben". 2. In Northeastern Mandarin, there are a lot of neutral tones.

[@beillyzhu9932]

KZbin: *Recommends video Me: And I took that personally Also me: Very interesting video

[@DSAhmed]

I would disagree that we simply ignore what's not important to our own language. It might not effect the meaning, but everything about the sound is still there and distinguishes people's accent, and if someone says something in an "unusual" way, we'll know right away that they're actually Irish, Canadian, or from New York, and just pretending to sound like they're from Texas. We can hear if the tone in English is a bit off or unusual, but unlike Chinese, it's not codified into the meaning, so we can safely ignore it.

[@sanazintheuniverse]

❤

[@lazibayer]

确实中文不区分长短音。经常听人把sheet读成shit😂

[@qq5369]

Train my ears to notice the pitch pattern in a word!!

[@josephmak0865]

吻你/問你 在老師的Instagram 早已看過. 要問你那位同學在1：07又出現了. 有幸今天再見到老師獨特的畫了.

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

哈哈對！😂又是那位同學😎

[@TheEWMaynard]

I know I'm very late, but I think the crucial difference between struggling with tones and the example you gave for English (feet vs. fit) is that people will still understand you if you say "video" wrong. In fact, it's expected that people who learn English as a second language will makes these mistakes, and it's fine. That's what accents are. However it seems like in Chinese you're basically unintelligible when you make errors with tones.

[@genace]

Do you think native speakers can understand based on context? Because English mispronunciations can cause misunderstandings as well! For instance, my parents and grandparents have accents and they’ll also often pronounce “video” like “veedio” and “fit” like “feet” like in Grace’s examples. But when they try to say “beach” or “sheet,” it often sounds more like…”b*tch” and “sh*t.”💀This can cause even bigger misunderstandings than 吻vs 闻. I’m still sometimes shocked whenever I hear my family members say this, but I can always discern what they mean if there’s context. I’m curious to hear what native Chinese speakers think😅

[@MaximKud]

Hehe, we russians, always mess up with i sound in english too. But about tones its like easy to understand but hard to master, at the start i didnt noticed difference at all, after some time i clearly understood but cant hear it always clear. So as always only practice of either listening and speaking can help

[@benstallone6784]

Is it cosmic irony that you mispronounce "color" in your analogy of categorizing tones? :)

[@cactustactics]

She just sounds North American to me? More of an 'ah' sound than the 'uh' you'd get in the UK

[@benstallone6784]

@@cactustactics sounds like the word "collar"

[@benstallone6784]

im in north america and never heard color pronounced like collar here before

[@cactustactics]

@@benstallone6784 I mean it could be 'caller' as well depending on the person's accent and voice and phrasing in the sentence, they could all sound valid to me in the right contexts! Maybe you don't say "colour" that way and I sure don't, but it's a vowel sound some native speakers ~do~ use for ʌ and it's consistent with the rest of her accent (she uses the same sound in "understand" a moment later). Doesn't sound like a mistake at all imo - there's a big difference between "you're pronouncing this one word wrong" and "your accent doesn't sound like I'd expect", y'know? You might disagree and that's fine, but I gotta back up English learners if I feel like they're getting unfair or misleading critique. Like could the vowel be shorter here? Sure! Does it still sound fine as it is? Yeah!

[@benstallone6784]

@@cactustactics its not a serious critique because she is brilliant and I never heard her mispronounce (imo) an English word before - it just caught my attention because of the irony

[@peta75189]

Why Chinese so louder, I don't like

[@은주2011아미]

Who cares 😊

[@user-xv4he4mt4x]

That’s obviously Chinese Chinese. 🇨🇳😢 Try listen to different nation speaking Chinese, you might find some difference. For example, Taiwanese people speaking Mandarin.

[@peta75189]

@@은주2011아미 no one cares just like some people racist to other people from a country

[@peta75189]

@@user-xv4he4mt4x you really right, I met many Chinese workers they from Southern China I don't like the sound, It's really different people from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

[@qazsedcft2162]

She is Taiwanese.

[@anders4u222]

I wouldn't mind if you kiss me when I want to ask you something:-)

[@tubeEseen]

That is disrespectful to say to a female teacher.

[@woodies2009]

別吃豆腐了

[@ReviTeng-fp2en]

在臺灣有幾個季節 ？