(names changed to save my face)

Me: So, are you and Jenny…you know…an “item” now?

Tommy: Oh yeah. You didn’t know that?

Me: I just heard from Edgar. How long has that been going on?

Tommy: Hmm…I guess since about May.

The moral of the story (of my life) is: I’m always the last to know.

New Tone Diagram

In keeping with the theme, I just recently saw this post from John Pasden (9 months behind everyone else is pretty good for me).

John has drawn a new tones diagram that’s supposed to be better than the standard tones diagram at showing what really happens when native Chinese speakers talk normally.

The Old Standard Diagram:

John’s New Tone Diagram:

The only thing new about this diagram is the 3rd tone but I immediately saw the sense to it.

The fact is: most of the time, native speakers just hit the bottom of the 3rd tone, exactly like this diagram shows.

This diagram is especially useful for showing what happens when tones appear in combination. And when don’t they?! I mean, how many of us have one-syllable conversations?! You’ll always be saying at least two syllables in a row, and that means two tones in a row.

Without mapping out all 20 combinations of two tones (4 x 5 because of that “neutral tone” which moves around), this diagram is good for a quick rule of thumb for where that 3rd tone is most of the time.

I’d like to post my diagrams for the 20 different combinations of two tones but since those appear in my book, I’ll have to check with my publisher to make sure I’m not violating something (although I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t sue myself).

Tones are the single biggest challenge to learning Mandarin and we laowai need better conceptual models than the traditional diagram and rules. Thanks John and Dr. Rongrong Liao of the Defense Language Institute for getting the ball rolling.

• Tone Changes
• Why Is Nǎlǐ 哪里 Written Wrong?
• And the Title Is: Chinese 24/7
• Funnest Things to Say
• Book in Hand

(hopefully Firefox users won’t have trouble with these)

qù nǎlǐ 去哪里? = Where are you going?

[See original post to listen to audio]

Now by itself: nǎlǐ 哪里

[See original post to listen to audio]

It’s clearly a 3-3 combo, just like nǐ hǎo 你好:

[See original post to listen to audio]

If it were really nǎli, it would sound like other 3-5 combinations such as zǒu ba 走吧:

[See original post to listen to audio]

In a 3-5 combination the second syllable is basically a 1st tone (maybe a little shortened). That’s not how nǎli sounds to me. I’m not talking about the 3-3 turning into a 2-3, we know that. I’m talking about whether the second syllable is up high (like a 5th tone would be after a 3rd tone) or down low (like a 3rd tone would be at the end of a compound word). I can’t hear it as anything but a 3rd tone.

Ok, is everyone convinced? It’s pronounced nǎlǐ (tones 3-3) and not nǎli (tones 3-5). I’ve never heard it pronounced with a 3-5 combination that I can remember.

Now let’s do a little research. Check all your dictionaries and see how it’s written. Here are my results:

• Chubby: Nǎli – WRONG!
  
• Lenny
  • “Where” (E-C): not present, only gives nǎr 哪儿
  • “哪里” (C-E): Nǎli – WRONG!
• Big Red
  • “Where” (E-C): Nǎlǐ – CORRECT!
  • “哪里” (C-E): Nǎli – WRONG!
• MDBG: Nǎlǐ – CORRECT!
• Nciku: Nǎli- WRONG!

So my questions for everyone are:

1. What does your dictionary have for 哪里?
2. Has anyone ever heard nǎlǐ 哪里 pronounced with a 3-5 tone combo?
3. If so, where are you?
4. If not, why is it wrong in 4/6 places in my dictionaries?

I didn’t think about this until after my book had already gone to print so I’m sorry to say that it’s consistently written as “nǎli” throughout the pages of Chinese 24/7. I thought the variations in the writing of the tones was due to the “secret tone” phenomenon. You know, like cōngming 聪明 or péngyou 朋友, where everyone knows what tone that second character has (2 and 3, respectively) but some people will pronounce the real tone (especially if they speak slowly) and some people will pronounce it as a 5th (“light”) tone.

If I’d only really thought about it, I would have seen that’s not the case with nǎlǐ 哪里. Why, oh why did I trust the majority opinion of the dictionaries? Why didn’t I listen to my heart? If we ever do a second printing, I’m definitely going with nǎlǐ unless someone can back me off the ledge and tell me everything’s going to be ok.

[update 3 June 2009]

I guess I should have included more examples of what I’m talking about. Here are three different ways to say “nali” 那里 with three different tone combos.

Before we get distracted, the real issue is not my pronunciation of these three examples. I’m not a native speaker and I’m not claiming these are the “correct” ways to say these combinations. I’m just hoping I got close enough to give ya’ll a ball-park idea of what the differnet tone combos might sound like. Feel free to criticize the zhonglish tones if I got them wrong.

But the real question is: Which of these have you heard native speakers say? (We’re going for descriptive rather than prescriptive rules here.)

Option #1: nǎlǐ (na3 li3)

[See original post to listen to audio]

Option #2: náli (na2 li5)

[See original post to listen to audio]

Option #3: nǎli (na3 li5)

[See original post to listen to audio]

My theory is that we’ve heard #1 and #2 but never #3. If that’s true, then it is written wrong (as option #3) in many dictionaries.

• Tone Changes
• What’s up with Persuade?
• Nciku.com – My Review
• Better Mandarin Tones Diagram
• A Bit about Bù 不

I’m convinced the hardest thing about speaking Mandarin is getting all those darn tones right. I’m constantly fighting tone wars in my head to try to stifle the natural, feeling-induced tones I’m used to using in English to get the meaning-dictating Chinese tones right. I’m not ashamed to admit that English often wins and my Chinese tones are broken (enter zhonglish). That’s where “parrot people” can actually help.

Restaurants

The fúwùyuán 服务员 actually have a good reason for repeating back what I order: they want to make sure they got it right. Since I often go many months (years) without using some of this vocabulary, it helps to hear it again right away to confirm whether I got the tones right.

Me: suànmiǎo chǎo ròupiàn 蒜苗炒肉片.
Garlic seasoned greens and pork slices (see here)

Waitress: suànmiáo chǎo ròupiàn, shì ba? 蒜苗炒肉片, 是吧?
Garlic seasoned greens and pork slices, right?

Me: duì duì duì 对对对.
Right, right, right.

The first duì was for her getting the order right and the next two were for my realization that I’d said the tone for “miao” wrong. (Those 2-3 combos will get ya! The way I said it made it sound like suànmiao.)

It takes some careful listening, but once you know it’s coming (and it usually is), you can prepare for the instant replay and use it. I now purposefully choose words that I’m not sure about just so I can get instant feedback on whether my tones were correct. Of course, the assumption here is that a native speaker will not say it wrong even if I did. I think that’s a pretty safe assumption (usually).

Not-land

Before I knew the rules for tone combinations, and before I’d memorized exactly how to pronounce the name of my country, I would often say I’m from méiguó or mèiguo or méiguǒ rather than měiguó 美国. Those mispronunciations could be hanzi-fied as 没国, 妹国, and 没果 meaning “not country / not-land,” “younger sister country,” and “no fruit,” respectively.

The good news is: no Chinese person would ever talk about “Not-land” or “Sisterland” so I was never misunderstood. The context was very much in my favor to allow a Chinese person to understand me despite the wrong tones (not always the case at all!). But I noticed people would often (dare I say always?) repeat the name of my country back to me like this:

Stranger: nǐ láizì nǎli? 你来自哪里?
Where are you from?

Me: méiguó.
Not-land.

Stranger: měiguó 美国.
America.

Me: duì 对
Right.

Now I say it right most (dare I say all?) the time, but the repeating hasn’t stopped. That’s the last point I want to make: parrot people don’t mean you’ve said it wrong.

They Do it to Each Other

I often have the treat of listening to two Chinese teachers here on campus meat each other for the first time. The conversation goes something like this.

A: nǐ shì nǎge xì de? 你是哪个系的?
What department do you work in?

B: kuàijì xì 会计系.
Accounting.

A: o, kuàijì xì. wǒ shì wàiyǔ xì de 哦, 会计系. 我是外语系的.
Oh, accounting. I’m in the Foreign Language Department.

B: wàiyǔ xì. nǐ jīngcháng lái zhèlǐ dǎ qiú ma? 外语系. 你经常来这里打球吗?
Foreign Language Department. Do you often come here to play ball? (pingpong, basketball, whatever)

A: bù jīngcháng 不经常.
Not often.

B: o, bù jīngcháng 哦不经常.
Oh, not often.

If I were really on the qiú 球, I’d get some recordings of this sort of exchange so you don’t have to take my word for it. But trust me, there’s a whole lot of repeating back going on even among Chinese people.

I always get the feeling that it’s more common between strangers or from a xiàshǔ 下属 to a shàngsi 上司. That makes me think there’s something curtural going on like: repeating what someone says is polite or shows that you respect them and what they’ve said. Can anyone shed some light on (guess at) some of the curtural factors behind instant replays? Has anyone else even noticed this? Chime on in.

• What Foreigners Like to Eat in China
• Why Is Nǎlǐ 哪里 Written Wrong?
• Tone Changes
• Tone Wars
• Better Mandarin Tones Diagram

A
A
A
A
A
etc.

Just to clarify, that means that every single line in the whole song rhymes (except for his two token English lines).

What is it about Chinese that makes that possible? The magic number = 25.

According to the pinyin chart, not every combination of letters in the pinyin alphabet is allowed. In fact, there are a whole lot of combination that are possible to produce, but simply don’t exist in Mandarin for some reason (like “ki” and “fin,” not to mention all the syllables we could create if we were allowed to put all those initial consonants in final position). This means that, even though there are technically 38 different endings on the chart, there are really only 25 sounds (according to my count) that can be at the end of a syllable. There may be more depending on “R-ified” endings, but we’ll get to that.

If Dr. Seuss had been Chinese, he would have gotten nowhere.

Different finals in Mandarin (for rhyming):

[update: I'm adding songs that I find that have these endings as the exclusive rhyme scheme (or at least dominant one). Anyone is welcome to contribute.]

1. a, ia, ua – 妹妹 by 江美琪, 中意他 by 梁詠琪 (Gigi)
2. ai, uai – 不愿说再见 by 王力宏, 第一个清晨 by 王力宏, 珊瑚海 by 周杰伦, 期待你的爱 by 林俊杰
3. an (ban), uan
4. an (yan), ian, üan – 浮城 by 陳奕迅 (Eason Chan)
5. ang, iang, uang – 倔强 by 五月天
6. ao, iao – Can You Feel My World by 王力宏, 小酒窝 by 林俊杰, 口香糖 by 梁詠琪 (Gigi), 咕嘰咕嘰 by 孫燕姿 (Stefanie)
7. e (le)
8. e (ye), ie, üe
9. ei, ui – 颓废 by 弦子, 一个人睡 by 莫文蔚 (Karen Mok)
10. en
11. eng
12. er
13. i (yi / ji) – 关於 by 孙燕姿 (Stefanie), 愛情黑盒子 by 梁詠琪 (Gigi)
14. i (zhi)
15. i (zi)
16. in
17. ing – 得不到的爱情 by 姚莉
18. ong, iong
19. ou, iu
    
20. uo, o – 漩渦 by 孫燕姿 (Stefanie)
21. u (bu) – 凹凸 by 梁咏琪, 休止符 by 孙燕姿 (Stefanie), 腹语术 by 莫文蔚 (Karen Mok)
22. un (chun)
23. ü (yu)
24. ün (yun)
25. er

(Did I miss any? Let me know if I miscounted somewhere.)

Who cares? Well, it’s not always clear from the pinyin that certain words don’t rhyme with each other. For example, “yan” and “ban” aren’t even close to rhyming. Also the two syllables in “yìsi” 意思 do not rhyme with each other, but look like they should.

So really, who cares?

1. People who are just starting to learn pinyin. Don’t get tricked by the writing system. ChinesePod‘s pinyin chart (huge, but good) is downloadable here. (I’d still like to have a totally online clickable one with absolutely every syllable on it.)

2. People who want to write songs or rhyming kids books in a foreign language but haven’t decided which language to use. The choice is simple: Mandarin Chinese. Isn’t that right, Chris?

3. People who are interested in “érhuà” 儿化 (*eh HEM* Beijing Sounds, *cough) and want to know what those syllables sound like when “R-ified.”

Enough with the innuendos, here’s what I want: recordings of those first 24 syllables “R-ified.” It doesn’t have to be BJS that does it, but I also want to know if there are any differences between the ends of, for example, “xiar” and “shuar.” If not, then we may assume that there are only 24 different kinds of “R” endings (at most) that one needs to learn.

If you don’t know what this “R-ification” is all about, you might look at this.

At some point, someone needs to produce a bank of sound files with erhua syllables with different tones. I think it’s amazing that doesn’t already exist. Maybe it does and I just don’t know about it. If so, please let me know so I can recomend MDBG use it to provide pronunciation samples for entries such as “wánr” 玩儿, which currently has no link to a sound file.

• Pinyin Chart
• Beijing Sounds – My Review
• Reductions: Missing Sounds
• Why Is Nǎlǐ 哪里 Written Wrong?
• What’s that “zi” 子 thing?

One of the tips from the students would inevitably be: “Always wear shoes if you’re outside.” I would follow that up by asking why. They’d say something about the shoes being made of plastic (which I thought was strange) and I’d say (in English), “No they’re not. The bottoms of your shoes are made of BANANAS!” The class always thought it was hilarious.

Someone would correct me and say, “rubber” and I’d make a big mockery of myself saying things like, “Oh no! Oops! I guess I made a mistake with my pronunciation!”

Now, here’s what I want to know from any Chinese reader(s):

Were my students laughing because:

1. They thought of the very subtle difference between the Chinese word for “banana” (xiāngjiāo 香蕉) and “rubber” (xiàngjiāo 橡胶)–a difference of only one tone?

OR

2. They actually imagined someone walking along the street wearing banana peels on their feet?

I know it’s asking a lot to tell me what my students were thinking. But perhaps you could just give your own response to my little joke. Which did you think of?

For us laowai, here’s the point:

Regardless of why Chinese speakers laugh (or don’t laugh) at that little joke, that’s a little taste of what it must sound like to them when we’re speaking Chinese and we get a tone wrong.

It’s not like in English when you put the stress on the wrong syllable and it’s a little harder to understand (for example saying “relatives” with the stress on the second syllable instead of the first). No. When we get the tones wrong, it’s a whole new word that could be just as nonsensical to Chinese listeners as shoes made of bananas. So we’ve got to get those tones right.

Related Posts:

• Funnest Things to Say
• Master the Tones
• Tone Changes
• Tone Wars

• Why Is Nǎlǐ 哪里 Written Wrong?
• Colored Tones on MDBG
• Tone Wars
• Linguistic Laughingstock-a-phobia
• Better Mandarin Tones Diagram

This post started out innocently enough as a fun way to test the new audio plugin (thanks to Beijing Sounds for the tip) and celebrate the joy of speaking a foreign language. But in the end (as you’ll see at the end) I ended up documenting some bona fide “tone fudging” by a real, live, Chinese native speaker. So, don’t touch that dial!

First, here are some things that roll so nicely off the tongue that I’m constantly looking for excuses to say them.

Top 4 Favorite Things to Say in Chinese:

Tech support note: If anyone is having trouble playing these audio files, please let me know and I’ll try to figure out what’s going on.

4. guàibude 怪不得 = No wonder

[See original post to listen to audio]

Of course you can also say, “nánguài” 难怪, which may actually get used more by real Chinese people, but where’s the fun in that?

3. chàbuduō 差不多 = more or less, almost, nearly

[See original post to listen to audio]

In addition to helping you accomplish all your equivocating goals, it’s useful with an added “le” 了 to mean:

[See original post to listen to audio]

chàbuduō le 差不多了 = That’s about enough (stop giving me rice / time to go home now, etc.)

2. suàn le ba 算了吧 = forget it / never mind

[See original post to listen to audio]

Here’s an example where you could use it with or without the “ba” 吧:

A: yǒu méiyǒu hóngsè de? 有没有红色的? = Do you have a red one?
B: méiyǒu 没有 = No.
A: suàn le (ba) 算了(吧) = Ok, never mind / forget it then.

Now, “méi guānxi” 没关系 also means “never mind” but it can also mean “it doesn’t make any difference.” If you really only want a red one (let’s say a lamp) then “suàn le ba” gets you out of buying one. But if you say “méi guānxi” it may imply that the color isn’t that important and you might still be interested in a white one.

But, as if our lives weren’t bitter enough, here’s an extremely confusing situation where “suàn le” 算了 means the opposite:

A: zhège duōshao qián? 这个多少钱? = How much does this cost?
B: wǔshíwǔ kuài 五十五块 = 55 yuan.
A: wǔshí kěyǐ ma? 五十可以吗? = 50, ok?
B: suàn le, suàn le 算了算了 = Ok, ok (it’s a deal).

The best way I can think of to explain this is: if the buyer says “suàn le” 算了, it means he doesn’t want it. But if the seller says “suàn le” 算了 to a price, it means it’s acceptable. I’d love to hear someone else take a crack at clarifying why that is.

1. niǔ niǔ niē niē 扭扭捏捏 = to be fake shy / to hesitate

[See original post to listen to audio]

While opportunities to say this are rare, it’s got to be the most fun thing to say in Chinese I’ve found so far. It literally means “twist twist pinch pinch” (again, someone please explain why).

To use it to scold your students for taking too long to decide who’s going to speak first in a dialog, you can add the imperative “don’t want”:

[See original post to listen to audio]

bú yào niǔ niǔ niē niē 不要扭扭捏捏 = don’t pretend to be shy

BONUS: Tone Fudging

You may have noticed that “niǔ niǔ niē niē” becomes “niú niǔ niē niē.” That’s codified. The ol’ “two 3rd tones becomes a 2nd and a 3rd” rule. But did you notice what happened to the “bú yào”?

When I recorded my informant saying the above phrase, I noticed a very interesting little phenomenon: she doesn’t say “bú yào” 不要 with a second and fourth tone like we’ve been told we’re supposed to. Instead, it sounds like “bǔ yáo” or maybe “bú yáo.”

I asked her if I heard that right and she said she could also do it the other “standard” way, but that the tone of voice (yǔqì 语气) would be different (she explains it all at the end of this post).

Here’s the standard way:

[See original post to listen to audio]

bú yào niǔ niǔ niē niē

Now, let’s listen to the first way followed directly by this “standard” way:

[See original post to listen to audio]

1. bǔ yáo niǔ niǔ niē niē

2. bú yào niǔ niǔ niē niē

And just for kicks, only the “bu yao’s” in isolation, repeated to really shine the spotlight on the phenomenon (sorry the “n” of “niu” is at the end of each–it sounds like “bu yaon” but we can deal with that, right?):

[See original post to listen to audio]

1. bǔ yáo

2. bú yào

Here’s her explanation of the difference:

[See original post to listen to audio]

“bǔ yáo niǔniǔniēniē” jiùshì bǐjiào kǒuyǔhuà de.
“不要扭扭捏捏”就是比较口语化的.
“[the first way]” is relatively colloquial.

yǔqì méi nàme zhòng.
语气没那么重.
The tone of voice isn’t that serious.

“bú yào niǔniǔniēniē” jiùshì yǒu yìdiǎn shēngqì de gǎnjué.
“不要扭扭捏捏”就是有一点生气的感觉.
“[the second way]” has a little bit of an angry feeling.

So there you have it, straight from a native speaker’s mouth. It opens up a whole new discussion called, “Well, how do we know what tones can be fudged to express feelings?” The short answer: we don’t, only they do.

I can’t help but think that this would have been called “Zhonglish” if it had come from a foreigner. But since it’s from a native speaker, it’s bona fide, acceptable Chinese. I’m sure there’s a lot more tone fudging going on with native speakers than we know about. I hope to get some more examples. Maybe I’ll start a whole new post category on it! Regardless, this is the first empirical evidence that what I wrote in Tone Wars isn’t as cut and dried as I originally thought.

• Better Mandarin Tones Diagram
• Why Is Nǎlǐ 哪里 Written Wrong?
• Tone Wars
• Where do I put the tone marks in pinyin words?
• Tone Changes

Pei-Chia Chen at University of California, San Diego has put together a Chinese pronunciation page that has all the two-tone combinations in a clickable flash grid that plays sound clips, which includes: an overview, the 4 regular tone combos and the 5th tone combos.

John Pasden, author of Sinosplice also has a handy downloadable set of mp3 files tone pairs. I like John’s choice of common, useful vocabulary for his examples.

It’s easy to tell by listening to those sets that the tones change depending on the tone of the word before and after it. It’s impossible to say the 5th tone (sometimes called the “neutral tone” or “non-tone”) correctly without understanding its unwritten tone-change rules: It’s low after the 1st, 2nd, and 4th tones, but high after the 3rd tone. The 3rd tone actually has a written tone-change rule: when there are two 3rd-tone words in a row, the first word become a 2nd tone.

Hopefully, by understanding some of those rules, and getting the sound of these tone-changes into your head you’ll be able to move along through John’s later stages of The Process of Learning Tones.

I go into much more detail about tones in combination and strategies for coping with them in my upcoming book. Please check back on this website or subscribe by email or RSS to receive updates on its publication.

Does anyone else know of any online resources for dealing with tone changes?

See also:

• Master the Tones
• Tone Wars

• Why Is Nǎlǐ 哪里 Written Wrong?
• Where do I put the tone marks in pinyin words?
• Better Mandarin Tones Diagram
• Tone Wars
• Parrot People Help My Tones

• dian…diao…. = diǎn diào

As opposed to:

• dian3 diao4

Sometimes, in a chat, or an email it’s just quicker to type diandiao pinyin especially for a single word. Or, if you’re keeping a master list of your own personal vocabulary on the paper, diandiao is usually faster to type than the numbers.

Of course, on paper, there is no point in writing diandiao because it’s easy to just add those tone marks.

See also:

The Pinyin Wall

How to type pinyin (pīnyīn) with tone markings

• Wanted: Convert Tone Numbers in Microsoft Word
• How to type pinyin (pīnyīn) with tone markings
• The Pinyin Wall
• Stump the Chinese: Hard Hanzi
• Tone Changes

So, that means it’s actually possible to make a chart of all the possible syllables in the Chinese language. There are 409 syllables in the Chinese language (by my count, as you’ll see) excluding the various tones each syllable can have (and they can’t all have all 4 tones).

That means there are essentially 409 “words” that you have to learn to say in Chinese, and then you’re done. You’ve learned all the pronunciation you’ll even need (except for tone stuff of course). That may sound like a lot, but it’s really not. I think more than half are easy for English speakers to say without any coaching at all. And they all follow patterns so, with the exception of a few tricky sounds, most of it is easy to learn.

It wouldn’t be possible to make one of these charts for English because there is no limit to how letters can be combined in English. But on this chart, blank boxes represent sounds that do not exist in Mandarin.

Of course, there are a lot more than 409 hanzi characters in Chinese. But they just start recycling those 409 different syllables. The result is that a whole bunch of Chinese words sound the same. That’s good news for those learning how to speak, but bad news for listening comprehension.

I should say at this point that, while “er” is sometimes it’s own syllable (like the number “two” = “èr” 二), there is a hanzi character “er” 儿 that is the only character that can be added to another character and not become its own syllable. For example 玩儿 (meaning “fun / play”), two characters, is written in pinyin as the single syllable “wánr” and means is pronounced “wahr.”

What’s the point of this?

Well a few things.

1. I firmly don’t believe the way for beginners to learn Chinese pronunciation is to go through and memorize the chart. No. That’s way too boring. But, I think by seeing what sounds do not exist (the blank boxes), I think it’s easier to understand the ones that do. I’ll explain more in later posts.
2. There are some funky spellings for some of the syllables. Some of the syllables have the “ü” umlaut but it’s just written like a regular “u.” And some of the syllables look like they should be pronounced one way, and they’re really pronounced another. (I don’t know how long I was saying “yan” like “yam,” instead of how it should be said: “yen” like the Japanese currency). I’ve color-coded them so that new learners can avoid potential pitfalls.

Since I couldn’t find a good pinyin table or chart that that was easy to download and print, I just made my own based off of one I got from Ian Hudson. Let me know if I left anything off the chart…

pinyin-chart.pdf
(requires Adobe Reader, which is available here).

NOTE: To download the document directly to your computer without viewing it in your internet browser, right-click on the link and select “Save link/target as…”

• Why Is It So Easy to Rhyme in Mandarin?
• What’s that “zi” 子 thing?
• MDBG Online Dictionary – Tutorial
• Pinyin Dictionary for Microsoft Word
• Unlimited Wireless Internet

There are several reasons why your Chinese might not be working:

1. You’re saying it wrong. This is likely, especially if the tones aren’t exactly right. I’ve said things before, and realized right when I finished that I said one tone wrong. While I’m preparing to say it right, I notice the listener has no clue what I’m talking about. Say one tone wrong, and sometimes you might have had better luck speaking Portuguese. I said it again, with the right tone, and she immediately understood what I meant. The tones are important. I wish it weren’t like that, but it is.
2. Your voice quality is wrong for Chinese. Ok, this is a weird one, but I have heard from several Chinese people that foreigners’ voices (this especially applies to men) are too deep. They also seem to be talking about the idea of “resonance.” The Chinese people, in general, seem to think this is “bù hǎotīng 不好听” (not nice sounding), and possibly more difficult to understand. If you listen to Chinese people (even men) their voices are a lot higher pitched and thinner, in general, compared to English speakers. (Traditional Chinese singing is also much higher and “screechier” to our ears.) So, one way to combat this is to talk in a higher pitched voice, and try to reduce the resonance of your voice (make it thinner). I’ve found this makes my Chinese sound more…um…well, Chinese and may even make it easier to for them to understand.
3. They don’t want to understand you. This has happened a lot too.
   • Maybe the Chinese listener has decided before I opened my mouth that I don’t speak Chinese and has decided that whatever I’m about to say is English or Russian.
   • Or, perhaps we’ve had a partial conversation in Chinese already and the listener has decided that I’m about to ask for a discount and is ready to say “no” when I actually ask if there are any other kinds. The listener answers the prepared “no” because he’s already decided what I’m going to say and just shut off his listening.
   • Or, as happened yesterday, the listener may not like me. I went to investigate a tennis club and I could tell immediately from the expressions and stopping and staring that foreigners (or maybe just non-friends of the current members) were not welcome. When I asked (as I have a thousand times) what time they open in the morning, the answer was “méiyǒu 没有.” That doesn’t make sense. Did he not understand me? So they don’t open in the morning? How are people playing right now? I asked what time in the afternoon they opened. “méiyǒu 没有.” Ah, ok. I get it. I’m leaving.
4. They don’t speak Mandarin. Everyone always says Mandarin is spoken by 1.3 billion people in China. Wrong. Only about half of the Chinese people in China can speak Mandarin (see this article). It is also worth noting, that even if they can speak Mandarin, they don’t want to. If two Chinese people are together and they both speak the same regional dialect, or a mutually intelligible one, they will always, and I do mean always, prefer to speak that dialect to Mandarin.

So, as you can see, it may not be your fault that your Chinese is “broken.” That can be strangely comforting, but also frustrating.

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