My third year in college, I decided I wanted to try learning a new language. I wasn’t sure which language exactly. I knew the language had to have a different writing system than English. At the same time, I wanted something with a high number of native speakers in my area so I could find frequent opportunities to practice in actual real life situations. In the end, I settled on Mandarin Chinese.
Chinese has very simple grammar compared to any of the other languages I have learned. Memorizing the characters takes time, but even that I enjoyed. I quickly found that my main challenge was the pronunciation. The sounds themselves weren’t difficult. However, I had never studied a language with tones before. Mandarin Chinese has four tones, and I couldn’t hear the difference between them. Since I couldn’t hear the variations, it was hard to properly pronounce them. I would do fairly well on everything except the speaking parts of exams. After a lot of practice, I finally managed to get the first three tones down. I still had trouble telling them apart in conversation, but at least people could understand my pronunciations of them. The fourth tone, however, continued to elude me. I just couldn’t seem to say it correctly. My breakthrough came when I was assigned a conversation partner during my third semester of Chinese. After I expressed my frustration with the fourth tone to the exchange student from Taiwan, she told me to put my tongue down whenever I pronounced it. So I tried bringing my tongue down to the bottom of my mouth whenever I pronounced the fourth tone…and it worked! No more red marks on all the fourth tones of my speaking assessments. I was quite pleased. But I wondered why none of my Chinese professors ever gave this advice. So I share this helpful tip here: When pronouncing the fourth tone in Mandarin Chinese, bring your tongue down to the bottom of your mouth.
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AuthorKelly Clark is author of this blog. She is a writer, blogger and novelist. Kelly writes articles for Edusson writing platform. Kelly is a Social media advocate. Freelance thinker. Unapologetic reader. Coffee specialist. Devoted food fanatic. ArchivesCategories |