I’ve started learning Chinese but, while I’m pleased with my progress, the tones are just a wee bit difficult. When I know what a word/character is supposed to be I may be able to remember/guess the correct tone but my spelling is better than my ‘toning’. It’s a weakness that’s reinforced with typing - zhuyin input prefers the first tone but that’s the sole tone input. Not that I do a great deal of typing - my Chinese is very basic, probably on par with a 2 year old, maybe. Listening on the other hand, I’m not sure I’d get any tones right if I didn’t know what the words were. Given the difficulty I’m having with tones is it possible to understand Chinese without hearing tones? Maybe it’s just a matter of learning more but I’m a reader not a listener, even in English.
You need to get your your brain to accept that the tones are 50% of the word pronunciation. If you don’t know the tone, you don’t know the word, as simple as that. Don’t be complacent and your brain will wire itself to deal with tones. Practise with flashcards where you just have to guess the tones (and practise your pronunciation at the same time).
I suspect taiwanese might be able to understand someone mumbling chinese speaking only the tones clearly, but they won’t understand someone not using tones.
Unfortunately you’re learning in Taiwan where tones are very flat. This makes it hard to hear them; if you happen on some old Northern Chinese guys you’ll hear the tones much clearer. However be aware that context is a great aide in listening comprehension; if you’re standing next to a horse you can presume most of the “ma” you’re hearing is horse and not “numb” or “scold”. That is also how Taiwanese understand toneless foreigners.
As a side note sung Chinese is completely toneless (for obvious reasons) but people still understand the lyrics.
Why would you want to?
The point of listening is to understand what the speaker is saying, isn’t it? Not to be able to write down the sequence of tones.
Get yourself a good dictionary arranged by Pinyin without regard to tones (like the Lanbridge one – very good for listening) and you can easily find the tones for words you heard but didn’t grab the tones for. This way you don’t need to know what the first character is to look up a new word.
Being able to put tone marks on things is a party trick. There are literally millions of people who can speak the language fluently (and perfectly, for all intents and purposes) but who couldn’t tell you how many tones there are in the first place, let alone label words. Concentrate on meaning, and if you have to type, get yourself a good input method that ranks words by frequency and doesn’t require tone numbers.
Context and meaning, that’s what it’s all about.
personally I’d be too surprised at standing next to a talking horse, and one that can speak Mandarin to boot, to be able to think about anything else
personally I’d be too surprised at standing next to a talking horse, and one that can speak Mandarin to boot, to be able to think about anything else[/quote]
droll, very droll
personally I’d be too surprised at standing next to a talking horse, and one that can speak Mandarin to boot, to be able to think about anything else[/quote]
droll, very droll[/quote]
why, thank-you Sir.
[quote=“babab00m”]
I suspect taiwanese might be able to understand someone mumbling chinese speaking only the tones clearly, but they won’t understand someone not using tones.[/quote]
Chinese is an equal speed / space language whereas English is not. By this I mean, when you speak a sentence of Chinese, each word occupies relatively the same length of the time. When speaking English however, each word may not occupy the same length of time. Some words need to be said longer than others. This is important for English learners and often very difficult to master. So, putting each English word in same length will sound unnatural and oftentimes difficult to understand for English native speakers.
Chinese though has tones that are hard to master for people whose native language does not have such feature, and tones are just like the length feature in English a vital feature to master, if you want to speak good Chinese.
Almost all Chinese dialects have their own tone systems. Each one is different from another. For example, I often think that my mom’s central China dialect from An-Hui province transposes Mandarin 1st, 2nd, to their 3rd, 4th; and their 3rd, 4th are Mandarin’s 1st and 2nd tones. When we were little, the siblings would “speak” only the tones with our mouths closed in front of my mom, so she would not know our secrets.
So, it is possible to speak only tones, and it appears to be an important feature if you want to learn good Chinese.
I think you are right about this. I was speaking to my Taiwanese friend yesterday, and said, “… ni3 hai2you3 gen1 duo1 ma?” and he told me my pronunciation was strange. I considered first the “usual suspects” and asked him, oh, were my tones wrong. To my surprise, he said, “No, the tones are correct… but sounds funny. Why you say ‘duo’ so strong?” I told him that I must, because it is a first tone word. He replied, “No, you say too long.” I probably do this with most first tone words, because they feel so unnatural to me.
That is truly awesome. This would be a interesting Chinese learning exercise for recalcitrant non-tone-speaking CSL students! mmm3mmm4!
Just out of interest, I’m guessing your a native Chinese speaker… Also a native English speaker? Truly fully bilingual?
[quote=“darienpeak”]
Just out of interest, I’m guessing your a native Chinese speaker… Also a native English speaker? Truly fully bilingual?[/quote]
No, I am just an old man. 
I am a native speaker of Chinese born in Taiwan. I came to US for my graduate study and stayed ever since some 27 years ago.
when you have your moth full, you can speak English with only the different length of words, and people who knows you well enough often can understand what you are trying to say, if they have some context.
in mandarin you can do that with tones.
me and my family often communicate hmmm3-hmmmm4-hmmm2-hmnmm3-hmmm3, when someone is taking medicine and unable to open their mouth.
In my experience tones make all the difference in the world even for simple short phrases or words. A few years ago back home I was trying to show off my Chinese at a restaurant ordering hot and sour soup. No matter how many times I said “suan la tang” he thought i was trying to say “won ton”. Finally I said, “I’m trying to say ‘hot and sour soup’, how do you say hot and sour soup?” He answered back in English, “hot and sour soup” 
:fume: You would think in that context choosing one of 3 available soups he would be able to pick up on what I was trying to say even with terrible tones, but nope. His English was bad enough and my Chinese bad enough he thought I wanted won ton soup.
I’d bet a lot of money that the guy you were talking to was a Cantonese speaker, not a Mandarin speaker.
It’s certainly possible, but he knew the Mandarin for hot and sour soup. After he told me how to say it in English I asked him to say it in Chinese and he said “suan la tang”. I didn’t see how what he said was so much different than what i had said 3 times, but that’s part of the mystery of Chinese for poor bastards like me.
It’s certainly possible, but he knew the Mandarin for hot and sour soup. After he told me how to say it in English I asked him to say it in Chinese and he said “suan la tang”. I didn’t see how what he said was so much different than what I had said 3 times, but that’s part of the mystery of Chinese for poor bastards like me.[/quote]
Don’t worry about it. 
I think the 1st and flat tone of “suan” is important to be clear. If you say it with 2nd tone, or 3nd tone, that will be very confusing to the guy.
I remember the early days that I could never pronounce the word, “Budweiser” so I had a lot of trouble ordering that beer. I switched to Heineken instead. I think Chinese speaker would tend to pronounce the middle ‘d’ as a voiceless ‘d’. But the native speaker of English needs to hear the voiced ‘d’ to recognize the meaning.
It’s certainly possible, but he knew the Mandarin for hot and sour soup. After he told me how to say it in English I asked him to say it in Chinese and he said “suan la tang”. I didn’t see how what he said was so much different than what I had said 3 times, but that’s part of the mystery of Chinese for poor bastards like me.[/quote]
Don’t worry about it. I think the 1st and flat tone of “suan” is important to be clear. If you say it with 2nd tone, or 3nd tone, that will be very confusing to the guy.
I remember the early days that I could never pronounce the word, “Budweiser” so I had a lot of trouble ordering that beer. I switched to Heineken instead. I think Chinese speaker would tend to pronounce the middle ‘d’ as a voiceless ‘d’. But the native speaker of English needs to hear the voiced ‘d’ to recognize the meaning.[/quote]
A voiceless /d/ is a /t/. I suspect it was probably the /zɜr/ CVC syllable at the end of the word which was the primary problem with intelligibility. The vocalic r family, especially in final position, can be deceptively important for comprehension. As a test, drop by a bar and order a Buweiser (kind of gloss over the “d”), I bet they will get you the beer you hope for (unless you hope for a Sam Adams 
). Alternatively, ask for a “Budweiyo” and I bet they will have a lot more difficulty.