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Pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese

It’s hard not to get annoyed with yourself or your tongue at least, when you start to learn a new language. Learning Chinese is no exception. You try to relate every sound to something similar that you know in your native tongue. However sometimes you have to resign yourself to the harsh truth that certain sounds do not exist in English language, or whatever your native tongue may be.

When I first started to study Chinese, the only other foreign language I knew was French (my native language being English), and for some reason unknown to myself, French pronunciation seemed to impress itself upon the pronunciation of these new, exotic pinyin sounds. I’m not going to lie, it was a bad start.As classes progressed, I managed to master the basics in pinyin sounds and had a general idea of tones. Though studying it part time meant that there was an awful lot of background noise to get in the way, and leaving this task to class time was simply not enough.

It can be a real headache trying to distinguish between some pinyin sound, not to mention words with the same pinyin, but a different tone. In the early days ‘cai’ and ‘zai’ sounds were one and the same to me, as were “jiao”and “zhao”

Let’s be realistic, the only way to drill these rules into your head is practice, practice, practice. However, unlike when Chinese children who learn Chinese in school, as an adult learner you have the freedom to choose exactly what form the said practice comes in.

Here are a few tips and suggestions for those learning Chinese from scratch for how best to master Chinese phonetics and tones. Once you know how to pronounce each sound, cementing this in your brain so that it comes naturally requires you to listen to, practice and memorize the sounds and words you hear every day.
Some useful tips for this learning process are as follows:
-Follow up words you study with practice drills. If you take a group class for Chinese, practice together!
-Make sure whatever dictionary you are using has good phonetic translation.
-Don’t avoid daily life situations that require you to speak more. Even trips to the hairdressers or massage parlor will get you using more Chinese than when sat at home.
-Watch the TV and listen to the radio. When you recognize a phrase, even the smallest of sentences, repeat it to yourself a couple of times as you heard it.
-Listen to Chinese songs, try and learn the words so that you can sing along.
-Try as much as possible to take on fresh sounds, don’t try to replicate a Chinese sound with a sound in English or another language.
One fun way to get your head around differentiationg between tones is with Chinese tongue twisters. Don’t expect to be very successful to begin with, these things aren’t easy!
m¨¡ m¨¡ qí m¨£, ÂèÂèÆïÂí
m¨£ màn, m¨¡ m¨¡ mà m¨£. ÂíÂý£¬ÂèÂèÂîÂí¡£

Literally translated, this means ‘Mother is riding a horse, the horse is slow, so she scolds the horse’. Here we see the pinyin word ‘ma’ in three different tones:
m¨¡ = Âè = mother
m¨£= Âí = horse
mà = Âî = to scold

Pretty mind boggling, right? As you can see here, three different pronunciations of ‘ma’ have three very different meanings, so my advice is start as you mean to go on, and pick up good habits from day one and you’ll have less of a nightmare to deal with later.

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