Mandarin Chinese TONES GUIDE That Schools Don't Teach You

This is an awesome explanation of all the individual tones, better than 90% of the ones you'll see.

My note to all the viewer in the comment second is this: Learning the individual tones and then they to add them piece but piece, one by one, into a sentence and sounding like natural does. not. work. at all.

I'll prove it you, when you say the word "recital" do you think about the vowel property of the first e, like reh, then stop, load into your brain the vowel sound of ci like sigh and then the a like ahll ? No! You absolutely never, for starters that process is way to slow, impossibly too much mental processing power to rapidly switch between quickly coming syllables.

An elementary school teacher will do this: they say "sound it out," they will have you repeat out a syllable so that you don't have to stop and mentally perform the operation of taking a syllable in your head and then applying the in this case 'vowel appropriate transformation" then the next one, to the end, and then and this is important they speed it up, and repeat more and more untill I the whole chunk is a in your auditory memory. The the word gets put in a sentence that you know the rest of the worst for and you over that until you can get it down.

Chinese teachers, none them do this. You never get built up to the whole verbal segment at the same time you learn them. The most progressive of all, all they do is increase it to tone pairs. Then they have you read or listen aloud and because that's what their own teachers did which is the stupidest thing you could possibly do with foreigners because foreigners can pronounce it yet like every native Chinese kid.

Don't believe me as an intermediate learner that focused in tones they way I was told as hard as I could? The top 4 famous polyglot Luca Lamparaielo says the same thing. The way tones are taught like this is wrong. Tone pairs is slightly better but sentences do not present this way where even numbers of tone pairs form a sentence with no other separations with commas and neutral tones and drawn out particles and deemphasizations.

This is superb, thanks. I've been getting very puzzled about how to pronounce the third tone. All the pictures show that there should be a "dip" in the pitch, but you often don't hear than in spoken examples. You explained it brilliantly. So glad I found your channel, thank you :)

Good explanation and funny. Kudos who edited the videos.

I'm using your excellent videos to work on my Chinese when I"m not working with my teacher. I love how you're relaxed and you make it feel fun and less stressful. Xie xie!!

Excellent video, you have a great way of explaining the tones. I find those examples quite catchy! A refreshing approach with gestures, fairly concise and easy to understand explanations.

I'm super new to all this and was a little overwhelmed when I first witnessed tones, but this video was really helpful in simplifying it for me! Thank you!

For portuguese speakers, the 4 "a" tones sound the same, but we have â or ã, that chinese doesn't use. I can't wrap my head around it. For my ears, the only difference between them is how high you are speaking, which makes zero difference in my language.

This was super useful. I knew there was something I was missing regarding the sound in the word wo. It takes "too long" saying it the way you are usually taught, and I didn't understand how you were supposed to say that fast and naturally like natives would. The way you explain it here makes so much sense. 100000 likes

Great video👏Thank you. You deserve more subscribers.

I like 3rd tone the most. You can say "Wŏ shĭ nĭdě băbă, Lŭkĕ" with it

what?

谢谢老师，我是在学中文的一个学生。我总觉得在学中文的时候 最难的part是声调。而且学到声调也非常重要。所以我们外国人要很努力得学声调，因为我们母语中 没有什么叫声调(even though we emphasize the sentences using different intonation , it doesn’t change the meaning )我们支持您。非常感谢拍这样的视频和帮我们学习中文

如果这评论里有错的话，对不起

You are so good at teaching this! Thank you.

thank you for making me more ambitious to keep on learning chinese, struggling by myself

Just going to point out that same-sex doesn’t necessarily mean “less distracting” to many people. 沒什麼同性戀的中文學生嗎？

That simplification of the third time really helped.

You absolutely nailed it! Instant sub

I'm just starting out and one of my main challenges has definitely been that of discovering my own tone range. I'm easily influenced by other speakers and voices: when I sing, I tend to imitate a performance I know instead of interpreting it myself. I also have a relatively low voice, so I don't often run into examples where the vocal register is even near my own. Your examples are wonderful! I'll try to keep those in mind. Subbed -- from a vomit position!

Awfully sorry, but doesn't the second tone start from the mid level and then go up? If it were to start from the pitch of the third tone, it might still be taken for the third tone only followed by the second. It took me and my Chinese friends a while to get me rid of the third pitch level whenever I intended to pronounce the second.

I am a little bit late to this video, but am I understanding correctly that standard tones are usually a bit longer than neutral tones?

Great lesson! Thanks for sharing.

Xie xie 🙃🌹💕👍

I've to speak it correctly on the first attempt. I'm always mistaken as a Chinese by everyone around me. 😅 99.99% of the time, Chinese will start speaking Chinese with me. Thank you for these amazing eduvideo.

Great job!
This is second time watching... with the intention of practice. I enjoyed so much.. ❤️❤️
Laoshi can you please mention the name of the movie that ... 爸爸不要 and two friends were practicing Chinese
Thank you so much for such great content!!

爸爸!不要，哈哈哈哈哈😄

I don't have no one one to practice with

the big bang theory is funny

Great 👍

I love you! 🥰🥰🥰🥰 huh! What! Huh! What?

The video i have been looking for :)

When I was going through the Pimsleur audio course (which I did 3 times) it was stated (at the beginning) there is 3 basic tones. Falling, Rising, High. Later in it, of course that which you refer to as a dipping tone was denoted as a combination Falling-Rising combination tone just as there is a Rising-Falling combination. - Note, it is very important to continue using the spoken language so it can become second nature. It is something that I know from experience. If you don't use it, you soon lose it.

Hi, I am a begginner here. I recently learned that when two third tones are collocated the first syllable turns into 2nd tone. But I don't know what exactly I should be doing if many of them are placed together for example in "Rènshí nǐ wǒ yě hěn gāoxìng
（认识你我也很高兴）"

I'd subscribe, but I hate simplified Chinese

Thanks ☺️👍

I want you to be my teacher!!!

多么搞笑的视频啊！这就是我开始学中文的原因。因为是最有趣的语言。

Mandarin is considered easier than Thai.
Many more people are able to learn Mandarin as compared to people able to speak Thai.

This is the first time I’ve heard to find my own vocal range and it was always frustrating trying to repeat after the women I was watching 😭

Wow cool video I’m serious it’s helpful

Tq 4 the lesson, Fan Laoshi

Love how you explained it, thank you!!

What happens if your voice always fluctuates? I don't have a specific tones, because my native (Portuguese) language and English doesn't necessarily needs it!

Thanks 😊

Agree with get a friend of the same sex to learn from...I did the boyfriend route. Still not speaking Chinese.