URLLesson Introduction
The alpha, the genesis, dongxi numero uno. All the other tones wish they were this high, but without the other tones, we wouldn't know how supreme the first tone actually is. That's the existential truth of tonal relativity. The first tone in history to get its very own podcast, and the only tone that's phonetically represented by its Chinese character--learn about it in this lesson.
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lustchina says
January 22, 2008
Obeying tonal rules like here - keeping it mono-tone is counterintuitive for us English speakers who want to use inflection to expression "tone" as we understand it - like surprise, or dissatisfaction. Sounding robotic as is the case here misses the "tone". I guess speed and volume at which something is said is a way to understand the emotion behind what is being said, within the confines of tonal rules.
calkins says
January 22, 2008
Classic!!! Barry Manilow floating in the clouds over the desert...best mnemonic ever!
john says
January 22, 2008
lustchina, I found that I was understood much better when I abandoned English sentence intonation altogether. It feels really weird to ask a question without adding the question intonation (which totally feels necessary to English speakers), but it works. You don't normally ever have to do ALL first tones, though, so you don't actually have many opportunities to sound like a robot when speaking Chinese... :)
vann0000 says
January 22, 2008
This is probably the best lession you have ever had.
changye says
January 22, 2008
The first tone is really easy, and I don’t know why but the second tone is most difficult for me. I think those notorious “third tones in series” are actually not so hard. Once you get used to them, you can pronounce them properly (and easily). In fact, if it were not for “the third tones rule”, speaking Chinese would be much more difficult.
architpol says
January 22, 2008
Great lesson, and great timing. Tonight in my Chinese class, our teacher was stressing the importance of tones. So next week I will be a robot!! (or a floating Manilow). That will be quite a contrast to fourth tone because the teacher likes to stomp his foot and say get mad with fourth tone!
architpol says
January 22, 2008
In the lesson "Time to Go", the word gàn 干, (to do) was used. In this lesson 干 means "dry." Is it only context that tells them apart? It's bad enough when they sound alike, but when they look the same but mean something else....!
bingge says
January 22, 2008
Wow, you guys are magicians - you made a lesson about the first tone interesting!! :)
bingge says
January 22, 2008
oh, hey, look at that - the words for magician are both first tone! 巫师 wu1shi1 - 对不对? (dui bu dui)
amber says
January 22, 2008
hi architpol, 干 is a 多音词 (duōyīncí) which is a character with more than one possible pronunciation. In this case: 干 (gān) dry 干 (gàn) to do
amber says
January 22, 2008
hi bingge, The more commonly used word for magician is: 魔术师 (móshùshī) (at least has one first tone!)
frank says
January 22, 2008
OMG! Is that the toy robot from Kentucky Fried Movie?!
artkho says
January 22, 2008
Can we have an extra lesson on the first tone? I want to hear Jenny, John and Ken sing the words "Oh Mandy" and "Copacabana" in the first tone. :)
clay says
January 22, 2008
Yeah, singing is what did if for me. After a year of study at UH, I still couldnt do a first tone. When Tang Laoshi told me to think of it like you are holding a note, I finally was able to get it.
mikeinewshot says
January 22, 2008
Actually I thought Jenny was saying 星 (xing1), which is indeed high in the sky ...
lunetta says
January 23, 2008
Great lesson! That photo must be the weirdest lesson photo ever, at least until you hear the lesson. :-)
chubbeecheeks23 says
January 23, 2008
the robot approach was funny. great lesson. =)
lichade says
January 23, 2008
I feel that all the lessons are good. Don't agree with using "What", as an English example of a first tone. When we use it the voice tends to rise; it's probably better as an example of a second tone.
zeeck says
January 23, 2008
Wonderful - so now I'll speak Swedish only using the first tone. People will faint ... Looking forward to the "other" tone lessons ;-)
suburbanite says
January 23, 2008
Excellent!! Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto. I have heard the singing analogy before--that is quite helpful. Please--just say no to Manilow.
rjberki says
January 23, 2008
will you do the other 3 tones as well? I would love to hear them slowed down. Might help.
clay says
January 23, 2008
RJberki, not only are you getting the other 3, we are going to give a little bit extra. stay tuned....
kencarroll says
January 23, 2008
lichade, I can assure you that John's 'what?' is in the first tone. You'll hear exampels of the 2 nd tone soon.
lustchina says
January 23, 2008
John, That's an interest point about being better understood when you abandon the English-speaker's tendencies towards tones. I still find I do this raised tone at the end of a sentence when in a classroom environment, looking for confirmation from the teacher that I am saying the right thing but ironically in the process messing up the tones. I wonder how you guys will present the other tones? 2nd- talking after inhaling from a helium balloon. 3rd- a DJ scratching with his turntable 4th- a chiwawa dog barking
rjberki says
January 23, 2008
also - are you saying that the Chinese do not use voice inflection at all to impart emotion or signal a question when speaking? The only inflections are tone related - period?
richnirish says
January 23, 2008
What a great lesson. You will never know much I struggle with tones.
faizan says
January 23, 2008
Great lesson. I love the part where first tone is compare with English word "what". This makes it easier to remember and understand. I guess we can expect more lessons on tones. keep up the good work.
lustchina says
January 23, 2008
Extending RJBerki thought there - are certain tones more masculine (I'm thinking 4th here) and others more feminine (3rd perhaps). Do words in chinese line up with tones in this fashion to any extent. Any patterns that can be discerned once you accumulate enough vocab?
rusotexano says
January 23, 2008
Great lesson. Funny picture. Copacabana sung in the first tone...hahaha. That made my day. Is this the first of 4 lessons? In other words, are there going to be lessons on the other tones as well coming up?
kencarroll says
January 23, 2008
rusotexano, Each of the 4 tones will have its own lesson. Then we will even have a lesson on the neutral tone!
kaliyaa says
January 23, 2008
Great lesson. Just right for me - I've always had trouble with the first tone, even after 4+ years of study. Pronouncing it makes my voice extremely (and annoyingly so) high-pitched. Being a woman, that might be okay but still... I don't want get on my own nerves when learning Chinese.
urbandweller says
January 23, 2008
Yes, please do a lesson focusing on the infamous 3rd tone! That thing can be tricky ecspecially when there are many of them in one sentence. Thanks!
heruilin says
January 23, 2008
That1 was1 a1 very1 nice1 lesson1! [all words sung with a high level floating tone]. Who can come up with the longest Mandarin sentence using only 1st tones？ I'll start with one I know can be bested by someone out there: 高先生開新灰車。 gao1 xian1 sheng1 kai1 xin1 hui1 che1. Mr. Gao drives new gray cars. 再見， 何睿林
chillosk says
January 23, 2008
My fave first tone word is 双胞胎。
TaiPan says
January 23, 2008
Frank, finally another Kentucky Fried Movie reference on cpod. OHMYGOD, A TOY ROBOT!!! AHHH!!!!
alijm says
January 23, 2008
kaliyaa, I have the same problem with my voice going too high when I speak (especially the first tone). A friend of mine (male) said that all the men in his level one class (taught by a woman) had trouble because her voice was so much higher pitched and imitating her pulled up all his tones and he has now worked to correct them all back to his range. I think women have this problem too because (at least in cpod) the women all have higher pitched voices than me so I have to correct all my tones down a few notches as well. If I'm repeating after someone I wait a second or two and then start in my own range.
jennyzhu says
January 23, 2008
This is the first of our tone series. The tone trio (the new nickname for Ken, John and myself) had a new year's resolution: to tackle tone-phobia. And we are really thrilled that you find the podcast helpful. For me, being observant about sound and mnemonic is key to grasping tones.
mananar says
January 24, 2008
Tones, tones, tones... I agree with Ken... Frightening!! But thanks for your effort Tone Trio !! I'm looking forward for the third !!
you3ming2 says
January 24, 2008
imagine the pandemonium if Cantonese was chosen to be the official language of China- 9 tones! Brilliantly surreal & sublime lesson- best & funniest ever explanation on tones
rusotexano says
January 24, 2008
Thanks Ken and Jenny. I'm looking forward to the future lessons on tones. Cantonese tones would be a whole different animal. I know that this site focuses on Mandarin, but do you think it's possible to do something on what differentiates Mandarin from Cantonese, etc. ? (tone wise) You guys might have covered this is a more advanced lesson already. I think it might be helpful for a beginner. In the SF Bay area where I have family, there are a lot of Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong. In Mexico and Texas where I live, I've tended to run into Taiwanese. Again, knowing that the focus here is on Mandarin, I still think it might be useful to contrast it with some others that you might run into.
rusotexano says
January 24, 2008
I wonder if Chinese speakers engage in "code-switching" where they'll mix up words from Mandarin, Cantonese and other languages in a conversation, even within a sentence? If so, I wonder how extensive it is and in what areas does it happen alot. (This is actually commmon in places where there are 2 or more languages are used around each other)
urbandweller says
January 24, 2008
So does anybody know how to say ROBOT in chinese? Is it a first tone? ha ha!
girlofgrace33 says
January 24, 2008
This lesson was so much more fun to listen to than my lessons in school. It was really great!
connie says
January 24, 2008
Hi, urbandweller ROBOT in chinese is 机器人 jīqìrén, first tone, forth tone, second tone.
huan9 says
January 24, 2008
To help remember the tones I like to think of 飞，爬，走，掉. I imagine the action and relate it to the tones. You can also do your 早操zǎocāo morning exercises to these verbs while acting out the four tones. 飞 fēi Fly Spread your arms wide and fly high like superman. 爬 pá Climb Climb a mountain or a ladder. 走 zǒu Walk / go Start standing up. Then take one giant step, dipping down a bit in the middle of it. End standing up. 掉 diào Drop / fall / down / away Stand a few feet away from the trashcan and toss something in. By the way, when are you guys going to start up Cantopod.com? I learned Cantonese as an elementary student when my family moved to Hong Kong. Then we came back to the US and I forgot most of it. I’d love to relearn it. Having learned Cantonese was mostly helpful to me when I started learning Mandarin. But I had trouble with some high frequency words. Yao means have in Cantonese and need/want in Mandarin. Yi means two in Cantonese and one in Mandarin. And if you say buy and sell in both languages you end up with four words all pronounced mai on four different tones! My, my, it confused the heck out of me.
francois1 says
January 24, 2008
Sounds somewhat like prof. Dawkins singing a lesson on the origin of life ! As a grumpy old man in his seventies,i certainly felt self conscious singing in a highpitched monotone...Got some strange looks from my grandchildren...
clay says
January 25, 2008
huan9, there are no plans at the moment to develop a CantonesePod, but we do have some other languages coming out in the near future...
milktea02 says
January 25, 2008
I like watching Taiwanese dramas, that way I can hear how they say things with the tonal rule and with expression.
milktea02 says
January 25, 2008
huan9, yes, Cantonese would be very difficult. I personally am born to a Cantonese speaking family and even I have difficulty saying words correctly.
clay says
January 25, 2008
rusotexano, yep, it happens....
frank says
January 25, 2008
TaiPan - I'm here for ya, man. "And who are these?" "Just lost drunken men who don't know where they are and no longer care." "And these?" "These are lost drunken men who don't know where they are but DO care!" "And these?" "These are men who know where they are and care, but don't drink!"
kaori says
January 25, 2008
你们好！ I try to learn this beautiful but difficult language... I wish to exchange emails with other people (chinese or chinese learners) to practice mandarin. I have to chance to speak mandarin. 谢谢 P.S. My chinese is very poor...I can only few sentences now (but with chinesepod i hope to progress qickly), so i will need english translation.
kokiya020 says
January 26, 2008
hello I'm a chinese girl but major in English i'm looking for some imformation about foreign study Chinese,so i find this website! i know chinese is very difficult.so .....come on !! 努力就可以成功 nu3 li4 jiu4 ke3 yi3 cheng2 gong1! sorry my English is poor!
klgardensong says
January 26, 2008
Hello, all. I'm late in chiming in, but really enjoyed this lesson and look forward to hearing how you cover the all the rest. Kathy
howard97 says
January 26, 2008
I also think "what" in English (non American) is more a 4th or 2nd. tones. The Americans tend to whine so to them 1st tone is like a whining kid retorting to his mothers request to do something. Please DON'T use English for analogies because American uses different speach tones. How to tell an American accent in 2 words? Ask them to say either "Hong Kong or Ice Cream" Then you realise American English and other (i,e. read the world) English are very different. Howard97
suaae says
January 27, 2008
howard - I tried it, with some of my (three American, four British) friends - got six very different results. Being a native speaker, I can tell apart the accents (duh!), but perhaps you could give others (i.e. non-native speakers) a hint what to listen for.
howard97 says
January 27, 2008
Hi Americans put emphasis on the first word ie. HONG kong ICE cream wheras Brits tend to say hong KONG ice CREAM and these can be converted to tones However your results can be clouded by the fact that your friends could be in an environment whereby their accents have become dulled. But the point I was making and you have actually verifed this by saying that a single source can not represent CPODs mnemonic for Chinese tones. Howard97
nicolas says
January 28, 2008
would love to have a lesson for each of these consonants: b,p,d,t,g,k,h,z,c,zh,r,final r + ji,qi,xi no need for lessons on m,f,n,l,s IMO
clay says
January 28, 2008
nicolas, stayed tuned, we have some newbie lesson that are going to attack some of these tough combos...
jackfrombelgium says
February 2, 2008
HI, About tones: http://www.chinaontv.com/index.php/video_play_new/E10009 Jack
ivanuemlianin says
February 2, 2008
After listening to this and the 2nd tone lesson, I finally got the slogan "It's1 not2 that3 hard4", or am I imagining things? Ivan
miumiu35 says
February 3, 2008
I like this lesson! I'm Japanese. Japanese pronunciation doesn't have tones. So, it's useful to learn it in details(*^-^*)
oxalismontana says
February 7, 2008
I am having some problem differentiating 'n' from 'ng' in listening. In this lesson 'qing' sounded to me like 'qin' rhyming almost exactly with 'xin'. Am I fatally flawed?
clay says
February 7, 2008
oxalismontana, Go here and click around on this pronunciation chart. They are tough ones to distinguish, but with practice you;ll get it. http://chinesepod.com/pronunciation/10
oxalismontana says
February 8, 2008
clayroup, Thanks for the suggestion. Will practice and pay attention.
jimbo66 says
February 11, 2008
does anyone know where i can download a patch or something so that i can see the chinese characters on my computer, i have windows XP. All i see at the moment is a square
clay says
February 13, 2008
jimbo66, you need to install the asian language pack. It is on your widows xp install disk.
subtleknife says
February 15, 2008
As for the discussion over the tone of 'what' in English, I think it's a great example of how we use tones to differentiate meaning in English too. Yes not everyone says it in first tone all the time - but they do when they want to convey the meaning of disbelief/frustration given as an example here (sometimes a fast fourth tone can do it too). Say it in second tone, on the other hand, and the meaning is different - you're generally asking for something to be repeated. I thought of this when reading my Chinese dictionary (on the first page) - the character 啊 （a, can be any of the four tones of neutral): 1st - amazement 2nd - pressing for an answer or repetition 3rd - surprise 4th - sudden realization We have the same kind of thing in English but can't indicate it clearly (with 'a' even - think of the complicated tone on an 'ah' meaning 'realization at last'). Another example I can think of is 'huh,' which in a 4th tone (or maybe a really high first) indicates contempt, but in a 2nd tone indicates surprise, bewilderment, disbelief or interrogation. This kind of example really helped me start to understand how tones are in fact an integral part to the meaning of Chinese words (and not just 'mood' words). They're not just a little detail that is a pain to memorize. Also it leads briefly to other comments about how to express emotion in Chinese if you can't vary the pitch of your sentence - there are lots of emotional particles that can be added to the end of a sentence - here I mean ba, bei, la, lo, ma, a, etc - each giving a different attitude. I find this really hard to decipher (would love to see a lesson, maybe more upper-level, about this).
vikingraider says
February 27, 2008
How do i download all of these lessons to my ipod?
federokete says
February 29, 2008
hello everybody! i am a brand new chinese learner and chinesepod member and i found this lesson very enlightening. i have been studying chinese for three months and this the first time i hear such clear examples and the actual pronounciation. it's really true that we shouldn't take anything for granted. thanks a lot! federico
triphazard says
March 13, 2008
Just a question, is there any hint in written Chinese as to how to pronounce a character that is used for different tones? (Like: gan4 and gan1)
immay143 says
April 2, 2008
I love learning with your help. Thanks a lot
user39596 says
June 7, 2008
so... i still don't get it. is there really any difference when you say he/she/it "ta"? They all sound the same to me.
light487 says
June 7, 2008
They are all the same.. :) The only difference is in the context and the written form. Think about it from a conversational point of view.. you don't just walk up to your friend and say "She is nice!" because the next thing he will say is "Who?".. or, using the same example, you can't just say "It is nice!" because he will just say "What is nice?".
The first thing you have to do when discussing an IT or a HE or a SHE in a conversation is define which you are talking about. You might say, "Hey man.. did you see that girl who just went past?" and he goes, "Yeah..?" then you could say, "She is nice!". So automatically your friend would know that the tā you are talking about refers to "she" and not "he" or "it". Whether it is a HE, SHE or IT is implied by the context of the conversation, it doesn't really get used by itself without first setting up (defining) what the thing is that you are talking about.
A written comparison:
他 tā Him/He
她 tā Her/She
它 tā It
Hope that helps.
Oh yes.. and another thing that might help get your head around it is to think of English words that sound the same like HOARSE and HORSE:
"My voice is HOARSE from all this cheering!"
"My HORSE is tired from all this galloping!"
They sound the same but they are, 1. written differently, and 2. defined by the context.
henxiaoxiongmao says
June 7, 2008
No, they are all 1st tone :-)
mlech says
August 1, 2008
Really funny lesson :) I just couldn't help laughing when I heard Jenny in "slowdown mode" and her first reaction to her a bit changed voice :)
Again, great lesson. Robot speech is a good mnemonic, too.
spanishlearners says
August 26, 2008
Chinese tones here I come,off to the other tones.
Ken, John and Jenny thanks a lot for a headstart in Mandarin that will make life easier enjoying learning it.
zazen says
September 8, 2008
Truly great lesson. You talk about Chinese being an economical language - how about the economy of that podcast?? Education, inspiration and entertainment in less than 8 minutes!
Learning tones seems very similar to training your ear in music to distinguish the 'quality' and 'colour' that differentiates between major, minor, diminished and augmented... once it 'clicks' they each sound totally unique.