Why does mandarin have tones

Firstly, tones are not a completely alien concept for English speakers. In fact, we have them in English! They are just more subtle, and have slightly different meanings. However, the basic idea is the same. Thinking about the English equivalents of tones are a great way of wrapping your head around their use in Chinese.

However, for me, thinking of them in this way helped me to accept them as being normal, which is necessary before you can master their use. This takes time, but not much else.

There is one secret to mastering Chinese tones. Well, two really. Listening a lot and speaking a lot. Listening should always come first, though, as with a language like Chinese, it is just not feasible to start speaking right away without completely butchering the language and being incomprehensible. It is extremely important to learn the tones of every new word you learn.

Often, even if you get the tone wrong, people will understand due to the context. Instead, listen over and over to it being used in a sentence and see how the language fits together.

Record yourself with a free application such as Audacity , and compare yourself to a native speaker. You will just know what the rhythm of the sentence should sound like.

To understand this, take a random word in English. Still, if someone speaks in a monotone in English, other English-speakers can easily understand. But in many languages, pitch is as important as consonants and vowels for distinguishing one word from another. At least a billion and a half people worldwide do it their entire lives and think nothing of it. Mandarin Chinese, with its four tones, is a typical example. Take the word ma. As tone languages go, Mandarin is by no means the most complicated.

The Hmong language, spoken in China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, can have seven or even eight tones. Tone languages are spoken all over the world, but they tend to cluster in three places: East and Southeast Asia; sub-Saharan Africa; and among the indigenous communities of Mexico. Thus when learning new vocabulary , it is really important to practice both the pronunciation of the word and its tone. The wrong tones can change the meaning of your sentences.

The following table of tones has sound clips which allow you to hear the tones. Listen to each tone and try to mimic it as closely as possible. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

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