How Do You Approach a Tonal Language?

Рет қаралды 10,760

Жыл бұрын

On this video I'll share my direct experience with learning a tonal langauge. What works? What doesn't? And most importantly, can you do it?
A tone language, or tonal language, is a language in which words can differ in tones (like pitches in music) in addition to consonants and vowels.
Many languages, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, Hmong, Punjabi, Sylheti, Chittagonian, Yorùbá, Igbo, Luganda, Ewe, and Cherokee are tonal.[1] Other languages, including Indo-European languages such as English and Hindi, are not considered tone languages. They can use Intonation (linguistics) in different ways.
In some languages, it is pitch accent that is important instead. A word's meaning can then change if a different syllable is stressed. Examples include Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Lithuanian, and some Asian languages like Japanese and Korean. However, pitch accent is different from tones.
Some tones may sound alike to people who do not speak a tone language. They are the most difficult part of learning a tone language for those people.
In Mandarin, the most famous example "mā má mǎ mà (妈麻马骂)" has four different words each pronounced in exactly the same way but with four different tones. If numbers identify the tones, they can be written ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4, which means "mom hemp horse scold." Some ways of romanization mark each tone by a different spelling; ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4 in Pinyin would be written ma mha maa mah in Gwoyeu Romatzyh. Most use numbers or accent marks (mā má mǎ mà in Pinyin). There is a passage called Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den (施氏食狮史). It has 92 characters; all read the same way in Mandarin ("shi") but with different tones.
Mandarin does not have many syllables: the words for "mother," "hemp," "horse," "scold," and a word put at the end of sentences to make it a question are all pronounced "ma:"
"Mother" is "ma" that is high and level.
"Hemp" is "ma" that starts low and ends high.
"Horse" is "ma" that starts fairly high, dips very low, and then goes back up again.
"Scold" is "ma" that starts high and ends low.
To make a question, "ma" is added at the end, but it is kept very soft and short and about the same level.
Mandarin has "first tone," "second tone," "third tone," "fourth tone," and "neutral tone." Other Chinese dialects have more tones, some as many as twelve.
#language #tonal #mandarin

Пікірлер: 125

@Taipei_103 Жыл бұрын

After 7 years of studying Mandarin, including being surrounded by native speakers, I still get my tones wrong all the time.

@eh1702 Жыл бұрын

I found this about tones by the channel Grace Mandarin Chinese. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pMVznZaStLmtYas.html I am not even a learner, but I was struck by the comments, how useful people found it.

@NhatLinhNguyen82 Жыл бұрын

So sorry....i really feel for people who tone deaf.

@EchoLog Жыл бұрын

Native speakers do too. All languages use context and follow up questions enough to overcome pronounciation mistakes. Don't sweat it bud, Chinese speakers are always impressed regardless!

@Muck-qy2oo 10 ай бұрын

Bizarre. I got them so well after just a few hours of training that native speakers couldn't differentiate anymore.

@tonydai782 8 ай бұрын

@@NhatLinhNguyen82 Being tone deaf doesn't make you worse at tones (at least not from a native speaker perspective, maybe for a language learner it's different, but I doubt it). The parts of the brain that are used when people say linguistic tones are not the same part as for musical notes. Just because you speak Mandarin as a native doesn't mean that you can't be tone deaf and vice versa. Think about it this way, do you ever think about tone deaf people when asking a question? In English, there's a raised pitch at the end of the question, and yet I've never heard tone deaf people talking as if the question mark is hard to say.

@michaelshelton5488 Жыл бұрын

"How do you approach a tonal language?" Very carefully

@phyoko3141 Жыл бұрын

I am a Burmese from Burma 🇲🇲 Myanmar, Burmese language is tonal language, Tibeto-Burman group close to Chinese.

@ChadKakashi Жыл бұрын

5:58 Thanks for this example man. My interest in Mandarin suddenly peaked. I’ve never been interested in it but hearing you speak slowly and precisely, showing the amount of different sounds you need to make then speeding up and sounding like a native was beautiful.

@jeanvonestling7408 Жыл бұрын

It is extremely hard for me to get the tone. I have almost no musical talent + my language, Polish, is very "flat". Accent is almost always on the second sylable from the end. In Polish you could say a word in any tone, prolong vowels, shorten vowels - meaning would not change. It would just sound strange and incorect comparing to the proper pronounciation, but as long as you pronounce letters as you should, the meaning would not change.

@Ordo1980 Жыл бұрын

In Hungarian it is pretty much the same. We have the stress basically always on the first syllable and it just goes down. It is hard to even imagine using tones all the time. Even English can be hard, where are a lot of words with different placement of stress.

@PC_Simo Жыл бұрын

@@Ordo1980 @Jean von Estling Same kind of deal in Finnish. As in our cousin language, Hungarian, we have the main stress on the first syllable (though, we might pretty often have a little ”sub-stress” on the third syllable); but, unlike Polish, Finnish *_DOES_* care about vowel length. For example; _”Tuli”_ (with a short ”u”) means: ”Fire”, but _”Tuuli”_ (with a long ”u”) means: ”Wind”; and _Tapan_ (with a short 2nd ”a”) means: ”(I) kill”, but _”Tapaan”_ (with a long 2nd ”a”) means: ”(I) meet”. To me, that Polish ”penultimate syllable” -stress pattern sounds a lot like the Italian stress pattern. 🇫🇮🇭🇺🇵🇱🇮🇹

@jeanvonestling7408 Жыл бұрын

@@Ordo1980 yup. I have problems with tone in English and German. I sound like a lifeless monotone person. Which, when you add typical Slavic / Central Eastern European lack of smile, may be perceived as unfriendly.

@jeanvonestling7408 Жыл бұрын

@@PC_Simo It's possible that our stress pattern comes from Italian as Poles at various points in time like to use "macaronisms" - Italian loanwords. I don't know stress patter in ecclesiastical Latin but there could be influence from this source too. We do not even have joint vowels at all - no Polish word has two vowels next to each other ("i" may be written next to some vowels but it is used to soften the preceding consontant). What we love to do is smashing consontant together.

@eh1702 Жыл бұрын

One useful way to think about tone in English of you ARE even a tiny tiny bit musical is to think of whole phrases and sentences as having a melody like a line in a song. And certain kinds of statement or question have that kind of melody irrespective of the specific words. Also - comedies can be very good for sharpening your ear to tones in English because often the characters are exaggerating the tonal quality, and you are getting boredom, irony, sarcasm, rhetorical questions and so in, all compressed into a short timescale.

@callummilburn8204 Жыл бұрын

my partner , who is from Beijing, felt your pronunciation was very good. I understood some of what you said, if slow enough. It helped me see where I was.

@technicalsupport-eo1ck Жыл бұрын

Just starting to learn Mandarin as an absolute beginner and really appreciate your advice. Would be most grateful for any further videos you produce with guidance on learning this language.

@yokai333 Жыл бұрын

Tlingit is a prime example of a tonal language. Better yet, all the languages and dialects are tonal in Alaska. Especially the athabaskan tongue. Easy word in tlingit is a euphemism and derogatory in English (ex: gōōch is wolf in tlingit, inappropriate section of human anatomy in English)

@themoroccanball 11 ай бұрын

What’s a gooch in English slang 😏

@transmathematica Жыл бұрын

All of the Mandarin tones occur in English as stress. We native English speakers are extremely skilled at hearing and speaking stress; but, and it is a big BUT, we have spent our entire lives dissociating the hearing and speaking of stress from word meaning! When we learn Mandarin, we have to learn new skills to hear tones as meaning and speak tones as meaning. The good news is that Mandarin stress is identical to English stress so we can instantly hear Mandarin stress and can speak it once we have mastered the tones. The bad news is that Mandarin tones and stress are almost the same! 😂😂😂 BUT, big BUT again, we are so skilled at hearing and speaking stress we can easily handle the conflation of tones and stress in Mandarin and - get this - Mandarin uses sentence final particles that carry stress where there would otherwise be ambiguity. And, whoopee do! - we are so good at stress that all this is easy for us. It just takes training followed by many hundreds of hours of listening and speaking to build our skills with tones.

@rowanwilliams5522 Жыл бұрын

The fact that you have two differently capitalized “BUT”s in there illustrates your point very nicely when I read your comment 😂

@_brok3n862 Жыл бұрын

Can't wait for the following videos about this

@peterpike Жыл бұрын

Metatron @1:35: "You've got a friend, a wife, a relative." Me: I'm not sure how to respond to that...

@Mortablunt Жыл бұрын

Sweet home Gangzhou!

@Cavouku Жыл бұрын

About the "I don't need training, once and I got it": sometimes, if you have a good ear, you'll get away with that now and again. I was speaking to some Chinese students at uni and now and again I'd try to copy a word or two, and they seemed to think I got it right. But that was just me being a perfect parrot for one or two words--I wouldn't be able to reproduce it, especially in a different context. I still don't get "xiexie" right each time I say it. Someone who fluked into a proper pronunciation here and there like I (supposedly) did would do well to not let it get to their heads. Even if you nailed it on the first try, it doesn't matter if you can't nail it 7/10 times, or more often.

@montyyy08 Жыл бұрын

I wonder why tonal languages proliferated mostly in East Asia, crossing different language families? Is it similar to how “click” sounds did the same in southern Africa, again, across different language families? Or why stress-timing did (mostly) the same in Europe.

@vidarfe Жыл бұрын

It's common that languages in the same area share some features, even when they're not related. Probably because people interact with each other over a long time

@TheOnlyToblin Жыл бұрын

There are languages over here in Europe that have tonal tendencies. Primarily us Scandinavians have tonal tendencies. Note though that Swedish and Norwegian are pitch accent language by definition, not tonal languages. But there are a few cases where tone matters for the meaning of the word. So it does exist here, but to a much lesser extent.

@mareksagrak9527 Жыл бұрын

Tonality is by no mean a feature "endemic" or specific only to East Asia, it is found in a lot of African Languages from Niger-Kongo family, in different native languages of America (Mixtec, Apache, Navajo etc)... But yes it is generally a matter of mutual contact that spread the tonality across Tibeto-Burmese, Tai-Kradai, Miao and, specifically under the influence of Chinese, in some languages of Austrasiatic (Vietnamese) and Austronesian (Tsat) families. In this respect your comparison to click sounds (from Khoisan to some Bantu languages like Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele..) is very correct. It's a kind of Sprachbund effect.

@babathreesixty 2 ай бұрын

@@TheOnlyToblin Look the word "Invalid", how you pronounce can determine the meaning.

@cheerful_crop_circle Ай бұрын

@@TheOnlyToblin Serbo-Croatian too

@dontusethesamenicknameonthenet 10 ай бұрын

thanks so much! i picked chinese as my major though i havent been exposed to it a lot in my real life 🙃 its good to get some piece of advice from someone whos got a major in chinese. 谢谢 ♡

@marcello7781 Жыл бұрын

The biggest suffering of learning Chinese, and even worse when learning Thai or Vietnamese.

@Mortablunt Жыл бұрын

I found Thai easier to deal with significantly easier 1. Not every single syllable have to have a tone 2. It’s written with a real script not logograms 3. Having five tones made it easier for me to separate them as two upper tones to lower tones in a middling tone so instead of trying to distinguish between four tones on a bag I just had to distinguish between paired tones.

@kori228 3 ай бұрын

@@MortabluntI don't recall Thai having neutral tones, so every syllable should have a tone? Two of them aren't written on the script so it may seem like they don't have a tone, but they do. Mandarin Chinese can also be seen as "paired". It effectively has: high vs low, rising vs falling

@lorrithelinguist Ай бұрын

Omg I'm learning Vietnamese and Thai rn. It is pure hell 😅

@chakravartinelohim1527 9 ай бұрын

Amazing job, my my favorite Italian made it again :3

@doggy5 Жыл бұрын

I want to add though that not all Chinese are native Mandarin speakers, and people from Fujian and Guangdong in particular may have strong accents and not pronounce everything perfectly. That's usually not a problem for communication, but if you want to ensure you hear perfect pronunciation, watch the news, or try to talk to someone from the north.

@yoroshikuonegaishimasu8649 Жыл бұрын

What about taiwanese pronunciation of mandarin?

@doggy5 Жыл бұрын

@@yoroshikuonegaishimasu8649 The Taiwanese accent is very similar to the accent of southern Fujian, the area around Xiamen. It's very difficult to tell them apart unless you listed carefully for specific words thus differ between both sides of the strait.

@peterbayne7227 Жыл бұрын

It would be great if you did a few videos on how to do tones and pronunciation in Mandarin correctly. I've tried learning Mandarin before (I currently work in Taiwan), and I fail to even get the basics down every single time. And no, I'm not tone deaf. But I can't really distinguish the tones at all, as well as some of the sounds (or example, ci, zi, si are identical to my ears). I will await any more videos on the topic eagerly.

@cubing7276 11 ай бұрын

zi should have a t-like stop at the start of the syllable like the end of "cats" but the final ts is one sound, ci is the same but there's air coming out and si is just the same btw the "i" sound here doesn't exist in English

@peterbayne7227 11 ай бұрын

So... they are basically the same...?@@cubing7276

@male1ism Жыл бұрын

I would love to hear your tonal tips. Right now I notice them mostly as a different length of word when listening but when I speak I'm hopeless

@RedmarKerkhof Жыл бұрын

I would indeed be interested in a video on what to listen for.

@unarealtaragionevole Жыл бұрын

I dated a Norwegian girl many years ago and I tried to learn a little, but I really struggled with their tones. This goes into something that Metatron was talking about in some of his other videos about vowel length. I think vowel length is a lot like tones for foreign speakers. I think it has something to do with speed talking. Their ears are not trained to hear things, and at the speed the natives are going, they don't hear the lengthening so they don't think they need to do them also. And natives can hear the differences.

@iberius9937 Жыл бұрын

Sorry, but Norwegian, like Swedish, is a pitch accent language, not tonal.

@unarealtaragionevole Жыл бұрын

@@iberius9937 Those pitches are tones. It's a tonal language.

@BichaelStevens Жыл бұрын

@@unarealtaragionevole Norwegian isn't dependent on tones. It's a pitch language. You aren't going to ride someone's mom if you get a pitch wrong.

@unarealtaragionevole Жыл бұрын

@@BichaelStevens This is a debate of semantics. What is the difference between a phonetic pitch and a phonetic tone? There isn't one, they are the same thing. Just as Mandarin uses tones to differentiate between the meaning of words like mǎ (horse) and mā (mother); Norwegian also uses tones to differentiate between meanings. Some classic examples where only the tone differentiates meaning are....loven (law) and låven (the barn), bønder(farmers) and bønnen (the bean), or endene (the duck) and endene (the ends). Norwegians themselves call them tones or "tonem 1, 2." And in some cases, Norwegian takes it a little further as the tones can also have a grammatical feature also.

@BichaelStevens Жыл бұрын

@@unarealtaragionevole It's really not, you are just dead-set on a belief and you won't let go of it. Vowel length differences exist in almost every language ever, and yet it is Chinese, Vietnamese, and a few other languages, where you MUST know tones or you will be ABSOLUTELY unintelligible, where tones are plenty and add a ton of variety to the same sound (ma has 4 variants btw, dont be disingenuous). Dont cherrypick. Be reasonable. Hell, let's take my language. Lapa VS Lāpa (Leaf VS Torch). Lode VS Lodē (Bullet VS He/she is soldering). Is my language tonal then? Is Latin a tonal language? German? Zählen oder zahlen? Drücken oder drucken? You see how ridiculous you sound? Go read the shi shi shi shi shi (施氏食獅史) poem and tell me you got the same problem in Norwegian, German, Latin, etc.

@mikkomuukka1755 Жыл бұрын

Yeah, I would definitely be in the first category of people. When I was in school learning English I had problems differentiating hard and soft consonants, like P&B and V&F. B and F are not very common in my language, words that have them are mostly loan words and people are not very precise with them, for example saying "panaani" instead of "banaani" all the time.

@petergustafsson1670 10 ай бұрын

I grew up in northern Sweden, fairly close to the Finnish border. The only minority that we had in any appreciable numbers in grammar school were schoolchildren of Finnish heritage. They could almost always be spotted, since they did the mistakes that you write of!

@janetcarson6034 Жыл бұрын

I have this problem with my Italian friends. They never want to correct me unless I make a mistake that might cause me embarrassment. I have asked many times but I can speak to a level they understand and they don’t. They just say they enjoy my Scottish accent 😅

@elhoim_3 Жыл бұрын

It might be due to the differences in pronunciation we have within Italy (on many levels from regions to cities)

@davidefumis1463 Жыл бұрын

Can't wait for more

@Bagginsess Жыл бұрын

How do you sing in tonal languages? Do different notes make pronouncing certain words impossible?

@ronshlomi582 Жыл бұрын

When singing (to my knowledge) tones are just ignored, and the meaning is understood from the context.

@Bagginsess Жыл бұрын

@@ronshlomi582 thanks!

@Tiaimo 9 ай бұрын

Tonal language is perceived by many as difficult, and this perception is heightened when one sees Chinese logo syllabics. If you were deterred from entering the Tonal language family, I would recommend learning Thai. By following these steps, you will become accustomed with the sounds and comprehend the concept. 1. Write each consonant and pronounce the fundamental consonants. 2. Write each vowel and pronounce the fundamental vowels. 3. To create a fundamental word, combine a basic vowel and a simple consonant. Then say it several times. You should be able to write basic words at this point without having to think about them. Teachers will ask you to write it down and repeat after them. 4. Given that you have a basic tone, teacher will teach you to follow each tone marker based on basic word in No.3. Same idea. write it down and repeat after him with technique of 5 fingers to distinguish sounds. e.g. 1. basic consonant ต/t (IPA- ɔː - stable) 2. basic vowel อา (IPA - aː - bra) 3. Combine above simeple consonant and vowel to form basic word ต + อา = ตา /// at this point you'll get the basic tone. 4. Add tone marker on top of basic word. Repeat after it and write it down. TH tone - ตา ต่า ต้า ต๊า ต๋า CN tone - ต๊า ต๋า ต่า ต้า You can become acquainted with each tone by using a few sets of letter combinations and tones. There will be a snow effect due to this process. Then, you won't have to worry about which tone you are in to distinguish between each one. Simply say it out. Through this process you'll also learn the meaning of each word by chance. Following the preceding stages, we will teach our children how to construct simple sentences using simple words. Since elementary school or kindergarten, every child has experienced it. The Thai language uses the Abugida script, which consists of 44 letters, 32 vowels, and 26 sounds. Compare Thai vowels and consonants with Chinese pinyin; only minor adjustments are needed for - Consonants (zh, ch, sh) are not include in Thai but simple in English, German, and Poliss etc. - Vowels: ü /// easy for French and German. (Pour moi aussi.) The remaining Mandarin consonants and vowels were the same, and after you mastered Thai vowels, it was even easier to make the Russian sound Ы (อึย). Communicating in Mandarin is not difficult. The most challenging aspect, though, is learning the Chinese logo syllabic, which takes some practice. Chinese logo syllabic lettering has a rich cultural and historical background. I really admire their ability to endure and grow over such a long time. In my view, writing Chinese characters is the highest respect we can show this language.

@christopherellis2663 Жыл бұрын

Bosnian. Long and short, falling, rising.

@darthrevan3342 Жыл бұрын

COuld you do mroe biblic Hebrew or coranic arab?

@tomislavhoman4338 10 ай бұрын

There are tonal languages in your neighbourhood - south slavic languages. For example in Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrian the word "luka" can mean a proper name, cognate to Italian Luca, can mean "port", and can mean "onion" in the genitive case. The difference is in the tone, long rising-falling, long rising and short falling. My question is, does this give any advantage when learning the language with tonal features, like e.g. speaking Spanish gives some advatnages when learning Greek because of a lot of similar consonates?

@tomislavhoman4338 10 ай бұрын

After some thinking there is one more case with my example, "luka" meaning "onion" genitive plural which is also short falling, but with a flat long "a" in the end :)

@sbmoulin9603 Жыл бұрын

Đúng rồi!

@martinzlatev6234 5 ай бұрын

So did you make another video about the tones? I couldn't find any.

@TakiMitsuha2016 6 ай бұрын

How would it sound if this story was narrated from a tonal speaker perspective of learning Mandarin? Becuz I'm a speaker of Tibeto Burman languages called Thadou kuki and Mizo(both are tonal having 3 tones former and later 4 tones) but i dont learn Mandarin so i don't exactly know😅 would it be easier for tonal speaker to learn Mandarin compared to non tonal speaker🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔. But as you said you completely change the meaning by saying the wrong tone is true but as a native tonal speaker nobody will get you wrong becuz even if you dont use the right tone the Context of your sentences will make us tonal speakers understand you. Hear me when i say tonal languages is difficult for non tonal speaker cuz i heard tones of the exact word which sounds very weird to my ears. FYI tonal speaker mostly are good at singing too.

@praveenb9048 11 ай бұрын

04:07 what do they know of Tonal, who only Tonal know?

@spaghettiking653 9 ай бұрын

What do you mean about the differences in the 3rd tone pronunciation?

@kori228 3 ай бұрын

he's referring to how the 3rd tone is usually referred to as a dipping tone, so learners over-compensate and exaggerate it going up and down, when it never actually sounds like that in reality, the 3rd tone is just low flat/falling (or rising before another 3rd tone), and the full dip-then-rise only manifests itself at the end of phrases

@xaverlustig3581 Жыл бұрын

There's an educational video somewhere about a foreigner being misunderstood because he said things in the wrong tone. They said each phrase twice, with the wrong and the right tone. For the life of me, I couldn't tell the difference. Us Europeans are lost without being taught what to look for, because in our languages tones just don't exist. I guess it's the reverse of some Asians confusing R and L because in their languages the two are not distinguished.

@galynnzitnik4600 11 ай бұрын

I try to divide Chinese sentences into phrases or 'chunks' of commonly associated words and memorize the pronunciation/tones of the chunks as a unit. I pretend it is a multi-syllabic word. Is this an approach other learners of Chinese use?

@xan0075 Жыл бұрын

Hey Metatron! Why don't you try making for free or selling well structured Classical Latin course? Since it looks like you excell in it.

@BichaelStevens Жыл бұрын

That's a huge undertaking

@xan0075 Жыл бұрын

@@BichaelStevens Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot that if something is really difficult to do, it is better not to do it. Is not like there's a market out there that may be interested or anything. I mean, how could someone possibly want to do something difficult that could generate income? Specially something like an online course? Difficult life questions...

@frenchimp 11 ай бұрын

@@xan0075 If you don't see the difference between "that's a huge undertaking" and "that's really difficult to do", I don't think I could communicate with you.

@ThalonRamacorn 9 ай бұрын

Cant you just go by context? I mean its the same sound... How do they even argue? When you argue, your voice and tone changes... do chinese argue without a change if their tone just to get their point across? This is something I really want to know :D Also singing can be a pain in the butt for them...

@kori228 3 ай бұрын

the exact pitch isn't always the same, it's about the contrast between them often. If you're arguing with someone, the contrast between tones is exaggerated. Your high tone will be really high, your falling crosses your whole vocal range, etc.

@babathreesixty 2 ай бұрын

All sub-saharan languages are Tonal. Open Syllables.

@bakters Жыл бұрын

Dunning-Krueger effect doesn't seem to be real. It's one of the experiments which we were unable to replicate when the so called "replication crisis" hit psychology. What seems to really happen is that all people overestimate their abilities, regardless of skill level. Yes, dumb people think they are smarter than they are, but smart people *also* think they are smarter than they really are. And it is *not* the effect as previously described. Previously: I know I'm an expert at something, but it's possible I'm even better than I suspect, because of Dunning-Krueger effect (such a narcissistic view...) Now: I know I'm an expert at something, but I'm likely not as good as I think I am, because we all tend to overestimate our level of expertise.

@frenchimp 11 ай бұрын

That's what people who are confronted with the realization that they know less than they thought tend to say.

@bakters 11 ай бұрын

@@frenchimp *All* people overestimate their level of expertise. That statement is trivial. Dunning-Kruger claims that actual experts do not, and even *underestimate* their abilities. I explained it. Twice. Why wouldn't you read the post you are replying to?

@ALL_IN_AMC Жыл бұрын

The Hmong language is also a tonal language.

@Mortablunt Жыл бұрын

My very best advice is for the love of God, don’t fucking start with Chinese as your first tonal language! At least pick a language that uses an alphabetic or abugida script. I would actually recommend Hausa, a west African language, as your first total language. 2 tones, uses the Latin alphabet, uncomplicated grammar, lots of English origin words, spoken slower.

@RanmaruRei Жыл бұрын

Quite bad advice, because people learn Chinese not because they want to learn a tonal language, but because they want to learn Chinese. It's just waste of time.

@AthanasiosJapan Жыл бұрын

Chinese is the most popular tonal language, but the script is intimidating. I would have suggested Vietnamese, which also has some Chinese vocabulary, but it is alphabetic and also teaching material is widely available. No idea about Hausa, I will check it.

@frenchimp 11 ай бұрын

What a strange notion. If someone wants to learn Mandarin, let them learn Mandarin. You seem to think that if someone who masters language X wants to learn language Y, he should start by learning X1, X2, X3... That's not how the real world works.

@stefanodadamo6809 Жыл бұрын

In short: it's difficult. More than you think.

@Mortablunt Жыл бұрын

Despair and suffer! Also don’t start with Chinese; 4 tones, fast talk, tone every vowel, logograms. Perfect recipe for pain.

@themoroccanball 11 ай бұрын

If you want an easy tonal language, go with a language related to English. (Only Indo-European languages that have tones are the easiest tonal languages to learn)

@fredrickcampbell8198 11 ай бұрын

*if you are well-versed in English as a first language

@themoroccanball 11 ай бұрын

@@fredrickcampbell8198 oh right. Forgot to mention that. However my advice also applies to people who speak other Indo-European languages (if you’re Iranian or south Asian this is gonna be a walk in the park)

@fredrickcampbell8198 11 ай бұрын

@@themoroccanball And I forgot the existance of Indo-European languages when I replier earlier

@frenchimp 11 ай бұрын

Care to provide an example or two?

@themoroccanball 11 ай бұрын

@@frenchimp yeah, in Europe there’s Swedish and Norwegian and in South Asia there’s Punjabi. These are the only Indo-European languages to have tones (2 in Swedish/Norwegian and 3 in Punjabi). These languages also serve as an introduction to tonal languages for western people.