Native mandarin speakers please. I have been studying putonghua for many years and I was recently reading a?

Question

text that said that using the wrong tone in mandarin is the same as using the wrong vowel in english. The example quoted was 'if you went into a store and asked for a p'n...nobody would know whether you meant pen pin or pan...also they used another example that could get you into trouble if you used the wrong vowel...'sheet'...Do you think that this is a valid comparison? Just curious, I know how important tones are. My teachers correct me all the time:)!!!--but I'd never heard it described like this before.

Answer 1

I am not a native speaker, but my wife was. But I am sure my experience will be a great help to you. She was an excellent speaker and teacher, but she was a perfectionist. For years I tried to study from her, but I failed. She always corrected my pronunciation and asked me to repeat it dozens of times until I was so discouraged that I stop learning. Twenty years later when I studied by myself, I was able to make very great progress in a short time, that she was amazed at what I learned in a very short time. The secret: I didn't care about the wrong intonation, but consentrate on the logic of the writing, and then learn the intonation later.

There is no question about the truth in what the author said in the text book. You should try to learn to speak like a native speaker.
But if yoiu wait until you can speak perfectly, before you try it, it is not very helpful at all. Chinese people are not as stupid as many think. They can guess from the sentence although you pronounced it wrongly. Like for instance if you say "May I borrow your pan?" or even "May I borrow your pant?", I would know what you meant, because you would certainly hold something which need a "pen" to write on, and not "pan" or "pant".
But of course the goal is , that we should be able to say it exactly using the correct intonation. But do not let that deter you from trying it out and learn by mistakes.
If a baby decides not to try to speak perfectly, he would be a dumb and mute person for life.

My philosophy is, if you are learning a foreign language, remember that it is not your mother tongue, so you are entitled to make a lot of mistakes in pronounciation. And if you make such horrible mistakes that people laugh at you, be thankful because that means you are still alive. If people are crying at you, that is terrible, that means either you are already dead or you are dying.
Besides, it is more blessed to be able to make people laugh even at your expense that to make them cry! So keep up trying despite the mistakes. Have fun!

Answer 2

Sign... mandarin is already more user friendly compared to some other dialects like cantonese.
In Pinyin, the phonics are followed by a number as each sound carries 4 major tones and 4 minor tones. It's like each sound is having it's own octave. But unless you are trying to get your Ph.D in Mandarin and be a language professor, don't loose sleep over it.
Just wait till you get to some words that carries multiple meanings and are pronounced differently for the different meanings. e.g. 車 = CHuh means car or vehicle. 車 = Juu is the equvilant of the Rook on the chinese chessboard.

Answer 3

It is a valid comparison. Changing the tone could mean a totally different word, just like changing the vowels in some english words.

Answer 4

You figured it out right there! A wrong tone in mandarin can widely cause hilarious meanings apart from the actual. So do beware of your mandarin tones! Happy learning! Jia you!

Answer 5

It all depend on the context. I too don't pay too much attention to tones but Chinese people are able to understand me because they can guess what I want to say.

But sometimes it doesn't work and writting it on my handphone is better.