Neil Gaiman – The Graveyard Book

2010-07-30

Title: The Graveyard Book
Author: Neil Gaiman
Year: 2008

On the off chance that someone would ask me who my favourite author is, there have been a long period in my life when Neil Gaiman would have been an accurate (almost obvious) answer. I’ve never been a person prone to idolising other people, but Neil Gaiman is probably the only author to have come close.

I’ve read almost everything Neil Gaiman has published (and most of it has been reviewed on this website, have a look here) and I’ve seldom been disappointed. Therefore, I’m a bit sad to tell you that I did not find his latest novel, The Graveyard Book, to be even close to some of his earlier novels. It isn’t abysmally bad or anything, it’s just very disappointing.

The basic idea is interesting, however: an assassin is sent to kill an entire family, but the most important target, the baby boy, escapes and makes his way to a nearby graveyard, where he is taken in by the ghosts and protected against his pursuer. The child is raised by the late Mr. and Mrs. Owens, and protected by a shadowy figure called Silas. The is called Nobody, or Bod, and the narrative goes on to cover how he grows up among tombstones and crypts. In the background, the original story with the assassin also continues, because the man who killed Bod’s family did not complete his job and is still looking for the last victim.

As in all his other books, in the Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman lets his imagination flow, and although the various episodes are not as brilliant as some of the others he has written, they are still entertaining. There are  quite a few good adventures to find in a graveyard for a curious kid. The problem is that this book feels like a TV series, with each chapter having an independent plot, which is almost completely detached from the wider perspective.  Bod explores the Graveyard and grows up, but there is hardly any coherence in the sense that earlier episodes are necessary or prerequisites for later ones. There is the with the murderer in the background, but in my opinion, Gaiman lets it lie dormant for far too long before he really sets things in motion.

To be honest, I’m quite disappointed with this book and I can’t even give it three snails. The ideas are okay and the writing style is good, but it simply isn’t on par with Gaiman’s earlier performance. I still consider him to be one of my favourite authors, mostly because of Sandman, Coraline, Neverwhere and Stardust, but more recently, he’s been drifting farther and farther away from that idol status he was once close to ascend to. Before reading the Graveyard Book, I thought that Anansi Boys was a deviating low-water mark, but now I’m starting to doubt. Is the ability to write fiction that holds me spellbound, which I thought infallible in him, finally starting to fade? Neil Gaiman is still one of my favourite authors, but it would be a lie to say that I admire him as much as I did before.

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What has been going on and what will happen

2010-07-24

As you might have noticed, my update frequency has declined dramatically over the past few months; I’ve published 26 posts since the end of February, so in almost five months, I’ve posted as much as I did in January last year alone. The reasons for not updating so frequently have been many and various, but I think that there is an underlying trend that only surfaced in my mind recently. During my final semester in Taiwan, I said that I would focus on speaking and that naturally lead to fewer books and fewer movies, and thus fewer reviews. After that decrease, I just don’t feel like starting to post a lot again. There are numerous articles that I would like to write and publish, but they will never be enough to post almost daily.

I started writing in English about three years ago, just after I finished my first year of English at university. The idea was to keep practicing using English, although I started studying Chinese at the same time. The result of this experiment has been quite successful. I believe that my English has developed immensely during these three years and I now feel almost as confident writing formal English as I do writing formal Swedish. This is not to say that I should close this website or stop learning English, but I do think that quantity has played out its role in my English studies. If I want to improve more, I need to do either of two things: switch area completely (i.e. start writing about entirely different subjects) or start focusing on quality instead of quantity. The first one is possible only from a learning perspective, because I already write about what I want to write about, so changing topics doesn’t make sense. Focusing on quality, on the other hand, is not only possible, it’s also in line with what I wrote above about not feeling the urge to post frequently.

In practice, this means that I will still keep updating the site, but only when I have something interesting to say. I hope I have had interesting things to say in the past as well, but I personally know that some articles were written more because I felt I had to do it than because I really wanted to write them. I suspect film reviews will go altogether, but book reviews will remain (after all, the time it takes to read a book is many times longer compared with writing the review, which is not necessarily true for films, and I also care a lot more about literature than I do about movies). I will try to write more about subjects I deem important, such as language learning, musing on life and the pursuit of dreams.

Furthermore, having at least semi-concluded the quantity phase of my English learning, I’m going to launch the same project in Chinese. As some of you might have noticed, I’ve been keeping a diary recording my adventures in Latvia with my family last week (there won’t be a detailed account in English, so either learn Chinese, use Google Translate or just look at the pictures). I suspect that I will write in Chinese most easy or superficial posts, and keep in English those articles I think that many people might benefit from, such as articles about language learning. Since few of my readers master both Chinese and English, I long ago decided to keep the two blogs separated. Here is a link to my Chinese blog.

Snigel.nu has been up and running for more than six years and there are well above one thousand posts on the website right now. Such a project has to be organic and dynamic to survive and thrive, it evolves and morphs into forms that even I could never have imagined when I first launched it. The only things that has remained the same through the years is that this website is still my window to the world. It will remain the place where I publish things I care about and which I use to communicate to a big audience consisting of family, friends and strangers alike. The need for a broadcasting channel such as this will probably never die, so expect me to keep updating for a long time yet, albeit in a slightly different form from now on.

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Taiwan, Sweden, Latvia

2010-07-14

I have been very bad at updating what’s going on recently. The last post was written ten days ago and in that time, a lot of things have happened, at least emotionally, geographically and psychologically. I’m back in Sweden and I’m slowly coming to terms with that, regardless of what I lost when I left Taiwan. Coming back home is great in itself and the experience is only somewhat dimmed because of what I have lost.

This is not going to be a long musing on my personal feelings regarding leaving Taiwan and coming back to Sweden, however. I write merely to say that everything is okay and that the lack of posts doesn’t mean that I’m dead. I also write to say that posting will remain scarce for a while yet, because tomorrow I’m leaving for Latvia with my parents, my siblings and their families. I will be gone until next Friday, so don’t expect anything until then. I have a few topics regarding Taiwan that I want to discuss while they are still fresh in my mind, so when I get back, expect more in that direction, along with a few reviews of books I’ve read recently.

I will also try to plan what I want to do in the near future and share that with you. During the summer, I will have plenty of time to write, read, socialise, exercise and lots more. I have too many projects I have postponed long enough! I will start thinking and planning while I’m gone, even though I won’t write about any of this here until I get back.

See you soon!

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About departures and death

2010-07-03

I feel like I’ve spent the entire week doing little else than saying good bye to people I love in various senses of that word. In less than a week, I’m leaving Taiwan, the country that has been my home for almost two years. I feel that life is like water, the more I try to grasp it and keep it close, the quicker it runs through my hands and is gone. Even if I return to Taiwan in the future, the time I have spent here is gone forever and will remain only as memories.

The above paragraph is a good summary of how I feel right now, even though I can easily break that kind of attitude down and show why it’s flawed, at least to myself. I also know that this is a transitory state of mind and that it’s far from how I usually regard life. Because leaving a country is just one aspect of a deeper problem, only the tip of the iceberg. Life in general is very much like this, but does that mean that a negative outlook described above is the only reasonable one?

Absolutely not!

Alan Watts once said that being born is like being thrown over a precipice and we all know that we are going to die at the end of that fall when we hit the ground, and that’s it. Therefore, the point of living is not to accumulate something that has a semblance of permanence, because whatever it is, that will also come to an end when we die.

So, what is the point, then? It is to live and experience things as we fall to our deaths. Since death is an integral part of life, as much as birth is, it should not be feared or have too much influence on the way we live. The point is what we choose to do with the time we have, not what we manage to accumulate during that time. Check the clip below to hear Alan Watt’s describe this by using music as an analogy (the animation is rather silly and of course added by someone else):

Apart from this principle of simply spending time in a way I think is worthwhile, I also try to avoid things that will stop me from doing that in the future. Borrowing huge sums of money to do what you want to do know might make you unable to continue doing things you want to do later, but studying something you enjoy might even earn you some money and make sure you can keep doing things you want to do. Living in Taiwan has mostly been something I do because I enjoy it, but it might also be useful in various ways.

Leaving Taiwan is probably the biggest emotional change in my life and probably the most difficult one as well. The change is a lot bigger than moving to Taiwan in the first place, because I only left Sweden with the intention of coming back again to pick up things where I left them. Sure, I leave Taiwan with the intention of coming back some time in the future for some unknown purpose and duration, but thaẗ́̈́’s only an idea, a concept, not a plan. I know that most of the people I say good-bye to I will never meet again. That indeed is something that has provoked much thought.

Do I regret coming here then, because it now comes to an end? Is it worth falling in love with something or someone, even though you know that you’re rushing towards the ground with every heartbeat and that you are inevitably going to crash?

Of course it is!

I have done very few things in my life that I regret and going to Taiwan is certainly not one of them. I would make that decision a hundred times over without the slightest regret. If I had the choice, I would fall in love with the same people again and I would part with them again, even though it would be painful. The point is what we do with our time, not the inevitable crash at the end, because whatever we do, there will be a final collision of some kind.

I will miss Taiwan a lot, but I will miss some people here more than words can possibly express. I’m not going to write anything about specific people, I think those involved know that without my explaining it here. But precisely as death is a necessity of life, departure is also a necessity of arrival. Life goes on and there is no real reason to feel sad about leaving Taiwan, although I might be difficult for a short time, it’s simply a change among many. The change is neither good or bad, it simply is. Every choice opens some doors and closes others.

Furthermore, the digital society we live has shrunk space a lot, which means that there are no final departures any more. Fifty years ago, you would not be able to read what I think about this so conveniently. Likewise, I would not be able to keep in touch with you, regardless of where we are located on the globe.

I still have time left here in Taiwan, though, even if it’s only a few days, and it’s time to leave the computer to meet yet some people for what might be the last time. This will make me feel a bit sad, but on the whole, I will feel happy to meet them again rather than sad about that it might be the last time. Death and departures are scary concepts when we encounter them without forewarning or reflection, but after a closer look, they are both natural parts of life and nothing to fear.

We might be falling to our deaths, but with the right attitude, the tingling sensation in our stomachs can be interpreted as exhilaration rather than fear.

in In English, Personal, Taiwan | 3 comments

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The Cat Returns and Spirited Away

2010-06-30

Title: The Cat Returns and Spirited Away
Author: Hiroyuki Morita, Aoi Hiiragi, Hayao Miyazaki
Year: 2002, 2001

Recently, I’ve been reading less manga in Chinese than I intended, but I’ve still managed to finish a couple of them. This post will be a joint account of two of them, both adapted from Studio Ghibli movies, namely The Cat Returns and Spirited Away.

To start with, I think the basic idea is a bit cheap and feels mostly like a strategy to wring some more money from an already exhausted concept. They have basically taken frames from the movies and printed them, together with the subtitles and some added phonetic symbols to denote specific sounds (although these are in Japanese and thus meaningless to me). So, the Cat Returns is not the manga on which the movie is based, but a manga based on the movie (which in turn is based on a manga).

However, the two stories involved are quite good. Spirited Away is a movie dear to my heart and I’ve watched it many times, each with great appreciation. The Cat Returns is new to me, but reading this manga made me want to watch the movie. It tells the story of a young girl who saves a cat from being run over, but it’s no ordinary cat, but one with connections in the kingdom of the cats. Before she really understand what’s going on, she is being spirited away to their kingdom and more or less forcefully married to the king. A simple but fascinating tale.

As I’ve stated before, reading manga in Chinese is a great way to learn the language, mostly because it grants me access to spoken Chinese in a written form, which is a lot easier to study without help and a lot easier to analyse. I hope I will be able to get hold of interesting manga even after I go back to Sweden, but it will definitely be more difficult than now.

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Elizabeth Vandiver – Classical Mythology

2010-06-27

Title:Classical Mythology
Lecturer: Elizabeth Vandiver
Producer: The Teaching Company
 Duration: 24 x 30 minutes
Media: Audio only

As kids, my brother and I listened a lot to radio theatre versions of stories from classical mythology, mostly Greek, and since then I’ve been at least moderately interested in the subject. This fairly short (24 x 30 minutes) lecture series from The Teaching Company brings back lots of memories, but also illuminates the subject matter in a far more scholarly fashion than I’ve previously encountered. This is a university-level course, not merely stories about gods and heroes.

Elizabeth Vandiver, the lecturer, presents the subject in a structured way and there is little to complain about except perhaps for her somewhat annoying accent. She spends the first couple of lectures going through some basic but complicated questions about the definition of myth and various theories of why myth seems to be a common denominator for all human societies. She then goes on to retell a number of famous myths and discuss what the represent and what they can tell us about ancient Greece.

I think this course ought to have been longer, because there are quite a number of interesting discussions that Vandiver could have delved deeper into. Of course, there are also many myths that are completely left out because of the limited time, and even though that problem wouldn’t have gone away even with twice as many hours, I still think more would have meant that the series became better.

On the whole, this is a decent introduction to classical mythology as a scholarly subject. Not only will it introduce the student to the concepts of studying myth, but it will also provide ample examples from Greek and Roman mythology, sometimes in a way different from what we’re used to. Thus, this series is great if you, like me, just want to learn a little bit more about the subject without going in too deep.

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Robert J. Sawyer – Wake

2010-06-25

Title: Wake
Author: Robert J. Sawyer
Year: 2010

Being a young American girl just starting a new life in a Canadian city might be a complicated undertaking all in itself, but since Caitlin is blind, it becomes even more so. As we slowly get introduced to Caitlin’s life, which is full of interesting details about blindness that are obvious when mentioned but that sighted people seldom think of, two things start to happen. First, Caitlin is contacted by a scientist who claims he can wake Caitlin from her life-long blindness. Second, the reader becomes aware that there is another somewhere, which is also stirring in its sleep.

In my mind, Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (the second book I read by him, after Hominids)  is about three things: Caitlin, blindness and information/computer science. The first bit feels much like cover for the rest of the story and is little more than a framework, but as such, it works pretty well. Caitlin’s life is interesting, but only insofar as it carries the story forwards in other areas. Her blindness makes this very interesting, not least because being almost blind in one eye, I think I’ve thought about complete blindness more than most people.

The technology involved in giving her the sense of sight also have some interesting side effects. Since she needs the internet to download updates to her implant, lots of data is being shuffled around and she becomes aware that she can actually see the internet. Through a long process, aided by a Japanese scientist, the reader and Caitlin set out on a long voyage that covers areas such as cellular automata, artificial intelligence, information theory, linguistics, computational statistics and much more.

This journey is Sawyer’s forte. He is extremely good at describing these various topics and make them come together and form a meaningful plot. Even though I haven’t studied natural sciences since high school, I’m quite serious when I say that this book made me interested enough to spend hours reading articles on information theory and related topics. Having a smart but young main character is a good choice, because it allows the author to introduce these fairly complicated topics to a beginner without making the reader feel too stupid (although this is of course dependent on the education background of the reader).

In short, Wake combines a couple of really interesting themes. He weaves them together into what is the first part of a trilogy, and even though I truly hate series of books, it is likely I will read the remaining two books when they are published (the second is already out). However, I won’t go on reading because of the brilliant plot, because of Sawyer’s ability to make science come alive and become interesting. Just like this kind of science fiction is meant to do.

Why not read on for the plot, then? As I said, it works as a framework, but that’s really not enough for a really good novel. For instance, there is a complete lack of antagonists in the story, which means that apart form experiencing new things and talking about cool science, not much happens. There are various complications with Caitlin’s implant and some minor social events, but they all fade into the background, perhaps rightly so.

To sum things up, this book is partly science fiction at its best, but it also lacks vital parts to become a masterpiece. This book inspires and makes me want to know more, but rather about the topics rather than the story and the characters. Four snails seem to be a good compromise. Wake has been nominated to this year’s Hugo Award, so it remains to see what other people think about it even though my own mind is already settled.

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Learning to pronounce Chinese, part 5 – Analysis

2010-06-09

This is the fifth article about pronunciation and I will continue writing about this subject as long as I think I have something worthwhile to share with others. So, far this small series consists of these articles:

Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – Attitude
Part 3 – Identification
Part 4 – Tones
Part 5 – Analysis (this article)

Self-analysis of my own pronunciation in Chinese

At the beginning of this semester, I decided that I would focus pronunciation and speaking in my Chinese studies. This is not because my ability to speak Chinese properly is very poor, but rather because it will be a lot harder to do this after I go back to Sweden. Continuing improving vocabulary and reading ability is, on the other hand, almost the same thing here in Taiwan as it will be in Sweden, at least in theory, so it feels stupid to focus on that now.

In order to improve pronunciation (see articles tagged with “pronunciation”), it’s essential to identify and understand whatever problems are present and then find out ways to correct them. This post is not about how to do this, but is rather intended to show the result of such a survey, i.e. what problems I think I currently have in Chinese.

If you’re interested in reading about what you can do to identify problems yourself (what I did to produce the results presented below, in other words), the article you’re looking for can be found here in these two articles: identification and tones..

A few of the problems are probably unique to me, but I imagine lots of foreigners make similar mistakes, so perhaps other people can learn from my mistakes as well.

It should b noted that this is the result of a fair amount of work, meaning that most of the mistakes have already been corrected. I feel that my pronunciation has benefited a lot from doing this; simply being aware of problems helps a lot! I don’t imagine my pronunciation to be perfect (yet), but I’m learning all the time and I know which way to go.

Method

The results presented in this article seem to be very well organised, but since this is only true because of the fact that I spent quite a lot of time arranging it properly, I’m going to explain briefly what I did to do the analysis below. I used all the methods presented in this article (including Arnauds method for analysing tone problems). Here is what I did:

  1. Focus on pronunciation
  2. Take notes whenever a problem is spotted
  3. Do this thoroughly for an extended time (4 months in my case)
  4. Look at all your notes and try to find patterns
  5. Sort the various mistakes into categories
  6. Analyse and discuss each problem with a teacher
  7. Try to define what the problem is and what you should do about it

Below, I have separated the pronunciation problems into two categories: tones and sounds. Tones deal with the different tones in Mandarin and the way they change in context. Sounds deal with how syllables are pronounced, regardless of tone.

Tones

My biggest problem with tones in Chinese is that the pitch range is too narrow, meaning that the difference between the lowest tone (the end of the forth tone) and the highest tone (the end of a second tone) is not big enough. I pronounce these tones correctly, but not clearly enough. This problem is of course a lot more serious when I speak quickly and naturally, and doesn’t occur as much when I read aloud or speak slowly. In short, my tones tend to converge towards the centre of the spectrum; I need to fight that lazy habit. In Chinese, you would say that my tones 不到位.

In addition to this, there are some specific problems. Below, numbers represent tones directly, so if I write 3 + 2 -> 2 +2, it means that a combination of a third tone and a second tone tend to become two second tones instead.

First tone

No problems, as far as I know.

Second tone

The second tones doesn’t rise high enough, especially for 不，一 in compounds (例如：不要，一樣). These two characters are unique in that they change not according to meaning (which is true for many other characters), but according to the tone of the following character. I’ve known this basically since day one, but the millisecond required to figure out which one it is enough to render the tone less clear than desirable.

2 + 1 -> 3 + 1 (例如：學生，國家). This is an isolated error which means that the second tone followed by a first tone sometimes turns into a third tone. I seldom make this mistake when speaking slowly or reading, but it does happen.

Third tone

Only last year did I learn how to properly pronounce the third tone in Mandarin (I wrote more about that in this article). That means that even if I know how to do it now, I still have problems sometimes, especially when speaking quickly. Here are the tricky combinations:

3 + 0 (例如：兩個，椅子)
3 ＋ 1 (例如：小偷，九千)
3 + 2 (例如：可能，口頭，有沒有)
3 + 4 (例如：解釋，好像)

As I’ve noted before， the third tone here should not be completed, but starts low and goes even lower, before it changes to the next character. It does NOT go up like you think it would if you read almost any textbook.

4 + 3 + 0 -> 4 + 2 + 0 (例如：這兩個，錄影啊). This is just yet another example, but one I think is extra tricky (it’s the same as the 3 + 0 above). It took me some time and practice before I could pronounce this correctly even when speaking very slowly.

3 + 3 + 3 + 3 (slow parsing). Third tone plus another third tone is simple enough, the first one simply changes to a second tone. The problem comes when you have lots of third tones in a row, because then you need to figure out which belong together. For instance, 馬總統 (ma3zong3tong3) should be parsed as (馬)+(總統), making only 總 a second tone. To do this, you of course need to know that 馬 is a surname and 總統 is a title. These cases are not very common and fairly easy to sort out. The problem arises when this has to be done on the fly and fairly quickly.

3 + 0 + 0 -> 2 + 0 + 0 (好了嗎). This is something of an isolated example. It seems that if I’m not careful with the third tone, it sometimes causes trouble later in the sentence. This example is very clear. If I pronounce the first character too sloppily, the two following characters suffer. If I pronounce the first third tone properly, the rest follows naturally.

Fourth tone

My fourth tones don’t go down enough or sound too mild (especially for 不，一 in compounds). This is the same problem as with the second tone, but the other way around. The fourth tone in Mandarin in quite short and aggressive and as a foreigner it’s hard to pronounce it naturally without feeling that you’re cursing. This is even more difficult when many fourth tones occur in a row (I’ve seen sentences with eight or more fourth tones in a row).

太 ＋ 4 -> 3／2 ＋ 4. This is an isolated case. It seems I don’t like 太 (fourth tone) followed by another fourth tone. To avoid this kind of harsh sound combination, I cheat and turn the first tone into second or third tone.

那 -> 哪 (那裡，那時候). This is probably one of my worst systematic errors. I tend to pronounce these characters the same way, which is very bad because they are frequently used and mean completely different things (one means “where”, the other one “there”). I can control this when speaking slowly, but I still get it wrong most of the time when speaking quickly.

Syllables

-un is not a monophthong. Reflexive sounds plus -un (zhun, chun, shun) lacks -en component and becomes a monophthong, but it should be a diphthong. I seldom make this mistake after non-reflexive phonemes such as lun, dun, tun, kun, etc. After becoming aware of this problem, I found it relatively easy to change.

The n/ng distinction is not the same as in English or Swedish and also affects the previous sound. This is a problem especially for -ing and -in, such as distinguishing between 林 and 凌 or 心 and 星. The problem is that the i-sound is different depending on the following n or ng. It should be noted that many native speakers in Taiwan can neither hear the difference or produce it themselves.

Syllables that start with y in pinyin do not start with a simple i vowel sound, but rather with a faint consonant sound akin to j in Swedish, a kind of fricative. Here are some examples: such as yi, yin, ying, yu, yun. This is not common in everyday pronunciation in Taiwan, but is very clear when proper pronunciation is important, such as the recorded instructions for a national test.

I produce the three sounds j, q and x too far forward in the mouth sometimes. This is not a big problem and something I’m aware of. The situation is possibly aggravated by the fact that many Chinese dialects really pronounce these sounds very far forward in the mouth (Cantonese is the most obvious example). Examples: 希望, 期望, 冀望.

Miscellaneous

Of course, not all mistakes are systematic, even though most turned out to be just that. Here are two problems I’ve found that I have problems with if speaking quickly:

I sometimes pronounce 自己 sloppily and the first syllable becomes unvoiced. This is a bit strange, because I have not noticed similar problems with other words.

別人 sometimes becomes 1 + 2 instead of 2 +2, but this seems to be an isolated case again, because I don’t have problems with other similar words such as 其實.

Conclusion

The above analysis the result of hard work over several months. This means that I have already corrected most of these problems at least to an extent. I need more practice to erase old habits, but I think that I’m on the right track. The above analysis would not have been possible without the help of several teachers and friends, so a big thanks to everybody who has helped me so far.

I don’t think my pronunciation will be perfect after these mistakes are corrected, because there is still a lot to learn about intonation and tone changes, but I do believe that when this is done, I will have come quite a long way down the road towards my goal of achieving perfect pronunciation in Chinese.

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Learning to pronounce Chinese, part 4 – Tones

2010-06-08

This is the fourth article about pronunciation and I will continue writing about this subject as long as I think I have something worthwhile to share with others. So, far this small series consists of these articles:

Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – Attitude
Part 3 – Identification
Part 4 – Tones (this article)
Part 5 – Analysis

A new way to identify tone problems in Chinese

Studying Chinese (or any other language), it’s sometimes hard to assess the quality one’s own pronunciation. People in your surrounding might understand what you are saying, but how do you verify how clear your pronunciation is? In an ideal world, it would be easy, you could just ask a qualified teacher and given enough time it would be possible to figure out most of the pronunciation-related problems.

However, the world in which we live is far from ideal, at least in this regards. Teachers sometimes tend to be complacent, lazy or just unwilling to point out mistakes, especially once your language level is good enough to communicate without too much trouble. I’m not trying to blame the teachers here, because this situation probably arises because students are different (I probably have loftier goals than most, for instance). Therefore, as I have said earlier, it’s really up to you as a student to take responsibility for your own learning.

A brief introduction

What I am going to talk about in this post is an ingenious way of checking if your pronunciation is clear. It doesn’t necessarily guarantee that it’s perfectly correct, but it will take you a long way in that direction.. I first heard this idea from my class mate, Arnaud Laraie, and even though I have added and expanded it a bit, this is more his idea than mine. Credit where credit is due!

This is what the method can achieve:

  1. Identify errors for closely related sounds.
  2. Prove whether your pronunciation is clear or not.

The second point needs some further explanation.Couldn’t you just ask someone if your pronunciation is clear or not? Of course you can, but most of the time you will get a misleading or even wrong answer. People don’t like pointing out the mistakes of others, especially if you’re a foreigner and a guest in their country. They might also have wildly different standards than you, so if you strive for a close-to-native-speaker level, they might just think that you are slightly better than the average foreigner, which is far from enough. In other words, don’t trust random people when they say your pronunciation is good!

The method consists of the following steps:

  1. Define a number of sounds you find difficult to distinguish
  2. Draw a diagram of them or just write them down in a list
  3. Read the various sounds and let a native speaker guess the word.
  4. Repeat until you make sure that no chance is involved.

In this article, I will use the tones in Mandarin Chinese as an example, but there is no reason why this method could not be useful for other languages or other aspects of learning Chinese. I will write more about this towards the end of this text, but now over to the tones in Mandarin.

The five tones in Mandarin

In Mandarin, there are five tones, numbered one to four with a fifth tone called neutral. These are different changes in pitch for a given syllable that is essential to determine the meaning of a word. It is hard for us Westerners to handle, but tones are most of the time more important than other parts of pronunciation.

For instance, if you’re in the lift going up to your apartment and you say the word “四樓“ (si4lou2, 4th floor) correctly, but with the wrong tones (let’s say you say si2lou2), the other person is most likely to hear something like 十樓 (shi2lou2, 10th floor), because those words are quite similar, especially in southern dialects of Chinese, but the tones are different. Chinese people listen to the tone more than the other sounds!

On the other hand, if you get the pronunciation slightly off (like switching sh and s, you say shi4lou2 instead of si4lou2), but get the tones right, you’re almost guaranteed to end up where you want to go. In other words, tones are something alien to us, but which is of paramount importance when studying Chinese. It’s also the perfect example to demonstrate this method of verifying clear pronunciation.

Getting started

From here on out, it’s assumed that you know how to pronounce the tones in Chinese independently and in theory, because I will deal with the real problem, which is tones in combination and in context. If you’re not clear about the tones in the first place, you can check this website.

This is a diagram showing all the possible tone combination in Chinese. I used a table almost identical to this one when I tried this out with native speakers and if you can’t come up with any smarter idea, you should try the same:


This is a simple way of rpresenting all the combinations of two syllables in Chinese. First look at the column to the left and select a tone, then combine it with any of the five available tones that can follow it. If you do this with native speakers, it might be a goo idea to use symbols instead of numbers.

Now comes the clever bit. Since native speakers tend to understand what people say even if they are pronouncing the tones incorrectly, you are now to choose a sound that has no specific meaning. There are many ways of doing this, pick one you like:

  • Use a single syllable in Mandarin (I used “ma”)
  • Use a word in your native language (”Paris”, “parloir”)
  • Use a sound without meaning (such as “mm”)

Analyse those tones!

Now, start pronouncing the chosen word or sound using the different tones! Let’s say you chose option two above and that you are using the word “parloir” to practice. Separate the word into its two syllables “par” and “loir” and add the tones. The goal is to check if the tone combination you pronounce is the same as the one the native speaker thinks you want to pronounce. Follow these instructions:

  1. Select any of the twenty combinations at random.
  2. Add these tones to your word (e.g. par2loir3, par4loir4, par1loir3)
  3. Let your friend/teacher point on the combination she hears
  4. Repeat at least twice for all combinations
  5. Repeat using a different friend/teacher

Of course, if you want to monitor your pronunciation in detail, you need to do this in a systematic manner and make sure you cover all the tones. Write it down! After you’ve practiced for a while so your friend/teacher is aware of how this works, you can also use reaction time to determine how good your pronunciation is.

  • If she points to the correct tone combination without the slightest hesitation, you can be quite sure your tones are good.
  • If she points to the right tone, but hesitantly, then you might have a problem.
  • If she points to the wrong tone, you obviously have a problem.

The really clever part here is that there is no way your friend/teacher can cheat or try to make you feel better about your language skills. If you pronounce something incorrectly or unclearly, you will know. Of course, you can still cheat, but that would defy the purpose of this exercise in the first place, so don’t do it.

Wider usage and some problems

This is a clever and very powerful way to identify and analyse pronunciation proeblems with the tones in Chinese. However, the same method can be used to teach and/or learn other languages as well. Any sounds that are close to each other in pronunciation can be used, such as n/ng in Chinese. If you want to check a students pronunciation in English, give her the following words to read:

  • World
  • World
  • Whirl
  • Were

As before, you guess which sound the student is pronouncing and thus lets her know what (if any) problems are present. However, it should be noted that this is a self-analysis tool more than it is a method to test someone else. In the setup above, it’s possible to cheat, even though this could be avoided by having a predetermined order of the sounds.

A problem with this method is that it doesn’t actually test correct pronunciation, only clear pronunciation. For instance, the sounds might be wrong, but as long as the teacher can tell which one is which, this system is useless. Let’s say that someone can’t distinguish “world” from “word” and starts pronouncing the “l” as a separate syllable. That would be extremely easy to recognise, but it doesn’t mean it’s right!

Conclusion

I wish someone had introduced me to this method (or something similar) about two years ago. I’ve spent an enormous amount of time and energy to correct my pronunciation and if would have known about my problems earlier, it would also have been a lot easier to correct them.

I tried this roughly a month ago and found that as long as I concentrate and stick to two syllables, I have almost no problems whatsoever. This is reassuring, but also a bit sad since I know I would have found lots of interesting things a lot earlier if I had used this method before. Please read this not as complaining, but as an encouragement for you to try this out earlier than I did! How good are your tones in Chinese, really?

in Chinese, In English | 3 comments

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Learning to pronounce Chinese, part 3 – Identification

2010-06-07

This is the third article about pronunciation and I will continue writing about this subject as long as I think I have something worthwhile to share with others. So, far this small series consists of these articles:

Part 1 – Introduction
Part 2 – Attitude
Part 3 – Identification (this article)
Part 4 – Tones
Part 5 – Analysis

Part 3 – Identification

Starting to read this article, I assume that you already have the right attitude (i.e. you realise that improving pronunciation is your own responsibility; see article one) and that you understand the importance of actually knowing in theory how Chinese is supposed to be pronounced (see article two). Obviously, having the right attitude and the right knowledge will not enable you pronounce a language perfectly. You still need to do two things: identify errors and finding ways of removing them. This article is about finding out your mistakes.

Passive learning won’t take you very far

It might sound easy or obvious to identify mistakes, but nothing could be further from the truth. For instance, teacher are not as much help as you might think, simply because they have too low demands, are complacent, think it’s embarrassing to correct foreigners too much or, in extreme cases, because they aren’t very sure of the theory themselves. I’ve written more about how to handle this in the second article.

As I’ve stated earlier, being a native speaker does not mean you know everything, so you can’t rely on friendly native speakers either (if teachers are not enough, the same is even more true for ordinary people). Most people are happy if they can understand what you say and will thus be very unlikely to correct you, even if they say they will

How to identify problems with pronunciation

There are of course a huge number of methods to do this, but  below I will discuss the ones I’ve found useful and/or interesting. A combination of many methods is more likely to do the trick that solely relying on one single strategy.

  1. Listening for pronunciation – Listening actively to native speakers is sometimes very helpful. This might be obvious, but I think most people listen for meaning and not for actual pronunciation. In Chinese, you can actually ignore what someone is actually saying (except if they’re talking to you , that is) and still learn something about pronunciation. Listen to the tones and the intonation of the various parts of the sentence.
  2. Reading easy textbooks - Find a text you can handle quite easily (i.e. with very few or no new words), a text book you have already studies or something similar will work well. Read it with your teacher, friend or whoever is kind enough to help you and make sure they point out mistakes. Read the same parapgraph or sentence more than once if it’s hard. The reason the textbook has to be easy is that otherwise you will spend too much energy just understanding the sentence and thus your pronunciation will be somewhat impaired.
  3. Theoretical studies – Reading more or less theoretical descriptions of the languages (phonetics)  is helpful. There are also lots of other people out there who have had the same problems as you have. I’m only one person, there are lots of others who can help you shed light on pronunciation. As an example, take a look on this discussion of the third ton in Mandarin.
  4. Reading along with native speakers – Find a text which is reasonably easy and read it together with someone. Let them read a sentence, or even half a sentence, and mimic their way of speaking. Listen for tones, emphasis and other things which are almost impossible to learn in any other way.
  5. Record yourself – If you have never recorded yourself speaking the target language, I think you will be surprised at how many mistakes you can easily hear yourself. Reading textbooks is of course the easiest way, but I would also suggest that you record natural conversation to see how you fare when you’re speaking entirely on your own. Recording might make you nervous for a while, but this should go away quickly.
  6. Guessing games with native speakers – This is a brilliant and very effective method to analyse and identify problems with tones in Mandarin. It also works for other parts of learning Chinese and the principles involved can be used for other languages as well. Since this is such a wonderful idea, I have written a special article about it.

Conclusion

There are numerous ways of identifying problems with pronunciation, you simply need to find one that suits you as a person and your way of thinking. I suggest using as many different methods as possible, because they are likely to catch different kinds of problems.

If anyone has suggestions of further tactics that can be employed to spot errors, please let me know, both so that I can make this article more complete, but also so that I can improve my Chinese more easily. The important thing is to continue finding out new ways to improve, because relying on the same methods all the time is unlikely to illuminate all the aspects of pronunciation.

The next article will be an expansion of point six in the list above, i.e. it will introduce an ingenious way to identify errors with pronunciation. It’s most effective for tones, but can easily be adapted to other areas. Stay tuned and good luck!

in Chinese, In English | 2 comments

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