Most Taiwanese know they use a tonal language. I wonder how many can relate the five tones to attitudes in English. I wonder how many of us can.
First tone doesn’t really relate to anything in English that taiwanese could relate I don’t imagine except perhaps
“LOOK AT ME GRINNING AND ACTING LIKE A GIT FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN THAT LEARNING ENGLISH IS “SUPPOSED” TO BE FUN, WHICH IT MIGHT BE IF THERE WAS SOMETHING MORE COMMUNICATIVE WE COULD DO.”
Then again it could be a happy “OK” in reponse to a question.
Second tone is an incredulous “What?”
Third I think is bored, maybe a bit irritated, like the “Alright” in “Alright, if you say so…”
Fourth could be angry like it says in all the dumb books you see written about Chinese, like “Damn, thats simplistic,” but could also be enthusiastic like the “Good,” in “Wow that’s good.” Confusing isn’t it?
Fifth, I dunno, it’s like an unstressed syllable I think, indicative of nothing.
I want to connect as many attitudes and emotions as I can with the tones, “translate” them, if you will.
Is that encouraging some kind of wierd transference I wonder?
“A handbag?” as spoken by Edith Evans playing Lady Bracknell in the 1952 film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” - Neutral, half third (low falling) and second tones respectively. Click here for a video clip.
Note: In Mandarin Chinese, a third (low rising) tone syllable immediately followed by a syllable of another third tone is pronounced as a second (rising) tone. A third tone syllable immediately followed by a syllable of any other tone is pronounced as a low falling tone (say the textbooks - but is sounds like a low level tone to me.) If there is a series of third-tone characters, all but the last are changed to second tone, as in “我也很好”. The above changes do not occur if there is a pause after the third-tone character, e.g. at the end of a sentence.
[quote=“Juba”]“A handbag?” as spoken by Edith Evans playing Lady Bracknell in the 1952 film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” - Neutral, half third (low falling) and second tones respectively. Click here for a video clip.
Note: In Mandarin Chinese, a third (low rising) tone syllable immediately followed by a syllable of another third tone is pronounced as a second (rising) tone. A third tone syllable immediately followed by a syllable of any other tone is pronounced as a low falling tone (say the textbooks - but is sounds like a low level tone to me.) If there is a series of third-tone characters, all but the last are changed to second tone, as in “我也很好”. The above changes do not occur if there is a pause after the third-tone character, e.g. at the end of a sentence.[/quote]
Coolness. Third before third - low rising.
Third before others - low level.
Three or more thirds - all become second but the last which remains a low level?
The last of which is pronounced low level (low falling?) if it is followed by a syllable in the first, second, fourth or neutral tone, but as a full third tone (low rising) if it is followed by a pause. (I knew you’t be interested, bob, but you might be the only one!)
For long runs of third tones (i.e. more than three), it is quite common to break up the tone shift/sandhi into a series of 2nd and 3rd tones. For example, it is quite common for 我也很好 (wo3 ye3 hen3 hao3 / I’m also very well) to be pronounced with the tones 2-3-2-3 instead of 2-2-2-3. In fact, a long string of 3rd tones pronounced using 2nd tones will sound very unnatural and monotone. Try saying 我也很想狠狠踩我老闆幾腳 (wo3 ye3 hen3 xiang3 hen3hen3 cai3 wo3 lao3ban3 ji3 jiao3 / I also want to angrily stomp on my boss a few times). Having 2-2-2-2…-2-3 series of tones wouldn’t sound right.
Having said that, how many consecutive shifts from 3rd to 2nd tones will depend on the speed of speech. Back to “wo3 ye3 hen3 hao3”, a fast speaker may go with 2-2-2-3. A medium speed or slow speaker will most likely choose 2-3-2-3.
Been done I think. What I’m curious about is whether Chinese speakers ever relate the tones they know in Mandarin to the tones English speaking people use to show attitude.
Juba’s got the right idea. I should find exagerated examples of tone changes in English, write them down and put a Chinese tone mark on them, after they have learned the tone marks in pinyin, of course.
Nobody I know of has done this. Maybe the whole thing is bonko? I dunno…