Archive for the ‘Tones’ Category
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
Let's face it people: Those 4 (actually 5) tones in Mandarin Chinese don't really play by their own rules. Sure, if Chinese people are saying one word by itself, and if they're saying it really slowly, then the tone will probably sound like the textbook says it should. But ...
Posted in Tones | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007
If you're writing a lot of pinyin on the computer, and you're not good with the numbers, you may want to try using something I call "diǎndiào"点调 (dot tone). It uses periods in lieu of tone numbers, like this:
dian...diao.... = diǎn diào
As opposed to:
dian3 diao4
Sometimes, in a chat, or ...
Posted in Tones | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
To really speak Chinese, you have to master the tones. But, most laowai don't.It's a good idea to learn the tones as you are learning vocabulary.
The problem with learning Chinese vocab is there are really two things to remember for each word:
the sounds (phonemes...I don't know how to say "phonemes" ...
Posted in Tones | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006
It's not that we don't have tones in English. No. The tones are hard because English has tones, but we use tone for different reasons.
In English our tones are usually applied to the whole sentence but can also occur on only one word. We use tone to show emotion, attitude, ...
Posted in Tones | 3 Comments »
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