It could be considered on the same level as a stressing error in English, or maybe more accurately a pitch error in Ancient Greek, except that there are 5 tones (or to make the comparison easier, levels of stress) in Mandarin (including the tone-less tone); it can be understood in most cases save homophones. The problem is just less marked in English and Greek because even the homophones have similar meanings.[one prominent exception I can think of is that drama of Aristophanes wher “galen” is wrongly accented-giving “frogs” instead of “clear skies” or something like that] (’project’ as verb, and ‘project’ as a noun). Even in English, the intonation patterns of American and British English can be quite different but a Briton and American can still understand each other; this could be similar to Chinese I think. Once again, context can usually work these problems out.

From what was said, it sounds like Chinese speakers probably think of each vowel + tone combination as a distinct sound. Another way to think of it would be a contrast between a nasal and a non-nasal vowel, like you get in French and many other languages. French speakers don’t think of their language as having vowels that can be either nasal or oral, so learners probably shouldn’t think that way either. English doesn’t distinguish vowels this way, so it’s confusing for us, but I suspect it’s probably counter-productive to think of Chinese as having vowels that can take a variety of tones. It’s probably better to think of each vowel + tone combination as a unique vowel (i.e. sound). Could be wrong though. I’d follow the perceptions of native speakers.

As for stress, that’s completely different. Most languages have stress of some kind, even Japanese has a kind of pitch-stress. Stress is actually very important in English, but unfortunately most Japanese try to learn English stress by putting little stress marks in their notebooks rather than by listening to tons and tons of English and actually listening to people speaking with natural stress patterns. Not to mention that most people putting the little stress marks in their notebooks don’t actually understand what stress is or how it works, and they just end up trying to shout one syllable really loudly.

I read some sites about it, and you were right. It appears that most people self-describe as ふんいきers (some people are self-confessed ふいんきers, especially younger folk), but are often unable to determine, as listeners, whether a speaker is actually saying ふんいき or ふいんき. My bad…

“I’ve come across this in the opposite way. Japanese people asking me about English stresses. Like Kats said, before I came to Japan I didn’t even know English speakers did it. Only when having to try not to stress things in Japanese did it become apparent.
One of my teachers had to give a small English speech and asked me to read it while he marked the stress points in. Then of course he tended to over-stress those points so it still didn’t sound natural.”

This leaves me to the belief that the whole let’s-analyze-the-language before we actually listen or use it, because you know, we’re too old to just get the sound of it is bunk. You should keep listening to the native speakers, try to imitate them, and leave your native language out of it. The whole analysis, as Khatzumoto said, is “verbal diarrhea” unless you already know the language, at which point it becomes insight and let’s you see that you had been following a system all along without realizing it.

Right now, I’m just trying to listen to the langauge as much as I can, even if I don’t understand every word. It seems to be helping–I can discriminate the words and phrases that the characters use better–if I basically understand the topic I can generally read and pick out what each word and phrase is being used for, etc.

Right now, I’m learning PHP using Japanese learning materials (right now I’m looking at aineko.com) and I’m wanting to build my own SRS because though Khatzumoto’s is great I want to be able to add any features I’d want. BTW, Khatz, do you have any recommendations for any PHP learning sites?

Khatz,

It seems like posts in this blog disappear and reappear at different times. There are a whole lot of posts missing off this particular blog post.

That university looks familiar. I think it’s funny how Japanese will sometimes be inconsistent with their character set. For example, I’ve seen signs that had 灯籠 on them, and signs that had 燈籠 on them, and I’m pretty sure even one that had 燈篭. Then there was an episode title of One Piece (I think) that was something like 灯を燈せ, where it’s the same character in two different forms. Then there’s the anime 東京魔人學園剣風帖2, that doesn’t bother with 劍, but uses 學 for 学. Then there are some 異体字 that are interesting, like 㐂 and 噐 (not sure if Chinese uses those).

By the way, about 雰囲気, I was pretty sure that the standard pronunciation was still ふんいき — I’m pretty sure I heard it that way and I remember reading an account of a girl being corrected by a guy when she said it ふいんき and getting her feelings hurt. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but it’s what my experience with the word is. And by “standard” I mean “most commonly used,” by the way, not “prescribed.”

We may know, for example, at a theoretical level, that English has stress, but we (well, I) don’t think about it consciously at a more applied level, when speaking. It’s just “the sound of that word”. Sometimes we put the emPHAsis on the wrong syLAble to be funny, but, I think it stops there; it’s only conscious when we deliberately make it so. Similarly, I imagine native speakers of Chinese just think “that’s how this word sounds”. Whenever I’ve asked Chinese friends “what tone is that?”, they always seem to have to think about it for a while and sometimes they even give me the wrong tone, even after trying to analyze it and even though they always say it correctly. My teacher (also Chinese) was the same way, and she’s an academic professional.

Where is the stress on the word “exchange”? I’m sure you say it right all the time, but I betcha you’ll stop and think.

Or not…I don’t know, really.

I think…and this is just a hunch…but I think we learners can tend to overemphasize tones. Before anyone freaks out, let me explain — of course bad tones will cause confusion, I’m not saying to throw caution to the wind. What I mean is, thinking too much of words being “this word + this tone”. Perhaps it would be better to think of it as just being the sound of the word. In English, words have stress/emphasis, but we don’t go around freaking out about “hey, what’s the STRESS on that word”…we just think of it all as “the sound of that word”.

Anyway, I’m just walking the path myself, so, there’s not much I can say. This is just what’s going through my head right now. There are definitely folk out there with better answers for you…

being a fellow chinese learner, I’m wondering if you’ve developed any techniques to deal with recognizing tones. i can more or less produce them on my own, but i’ve been studying for over a year and it seems i’m no closer to recognizing tones in rapid (i.e. normal native) speech than when i started. anything you suggest, aside from listening to lots and lots of chinese, and assuring myself that if a billion chinese people can do it, eventually I’ll be able to do it, too?

Yeah. As I understand it, the traditional 繁體字 are still standard (正字); the visual simplifications forced by the US/MacArthur occupation govt. are merely abbreviations (略字). So the trad chars are still valid and you are free to use them, which many people, in fact, do. For example, there is a university called 佛教大學. But I could be wrong…

I personally do use a sound like mmmmm. Sort of like umm, without the vowel; in other words without opening your mouth make a long “m” sound. This may be an idionsyncracy of Singaporean ｓpeech however.

4啊，or often simply just a pause, with lengthening of the preceding vowel is also used. The 啊 is more like a vocative in Latin however.
咳哟is another example. Though it is more for indicating exasperation. All these are actually very similar to Japanese よ、ね、さ、な but may be used anywhere in the sentence.

那个mmmm，叫什么，凉宫春日的小说啊，在哪里可以买到？ “That ummm, what’s it called, Suzumiya Haruhi novel , where can I buy it?”
我要mmmm排骨王,mmmm 芙蓉蛋，mmmm还有咖喱鱼头。 I want ummm, pork ribs,…. furong eggs, mmmm and curry fish-head.

Btw, isn’t 仏 the simplification of 佛 in Japanese? I find it odd that 佛 is still present in the IME, anyone got anything on this?

Also, an actual Beijing accent (along with many other Northern Chinese accents) is very rhotic. I believe you would have heard of this, with all the -儿　sounds at the back. I personally dislike this accent, I dunno why, I dislike most rhotic English accents as well, except Irish and Scottish ones lol. The standard Mandarin is (thankfully) much less rhotacized.