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longday
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Quote longday Replybullet Posted: 23 January 2007 at 8:31pm
All language learners may wish to locate some web resources that allow them to practice listening and getting feedback on their ability to produce language sounds. 
 
Anyone can obtain freeware from SIL that has a feature called IPA Help.  Using this little program you can listen to many different sounds from the world's languages, including what they call suprasegmentals like TONE.  Typically tones are presented using a particular vowel sound with the various tones riding on top of that vowel (instead of within words).   The audio isn't great but it's good.  The voice is that of the great British linguist Peter Ladefoged who died last year.  The program will also let you record for comparison your own attempt to reproduce what you hear and then play back the original followed by your imitation.   Here's the link:
 
The University of Victoria site is also a nice resource. Open this link and scroll down to the bottom right corner:
 
The UCLA site is also useful.  Open this link and scroll down to Chapter 10 for Chinese and Thai tones:
Open this UCLA link for general resources:
 
There are plenty of other resources on the web, but I suspect this is enough to explore.  It's so easy to allow these technical toys to distract us from serious studying. Best to you.
 
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Naruemon
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Quote Naruemon Replybullet Posted: 08 February 2007 at 1:39am
Hi somewhat relevant perhaps, I am studying Thai which has 5 tones and my experiences of that is first of all people dont laugh at you, they just dont understand you if the tone of the word is incorrect, allthough if the word is put in a concept and the tone is wrong they might somehow comprehend it anyway. Asians are very polite so the chances are that you are never been told that you didnt get the tone right since that would make you loose face and they dont want you to loose face. So anyway when I study Thai I never care about what the tone should be in a single word, what I do instead is that I try to mimic the sentence said on a tape in full and believe it or not doing that will make you get the tones right even that you could never tell what type of tone a specific word should have, you just know that i sounds right... And doing just that will also get the tone right even if its used in a completely different sentence, at least thats the case for me.Also using a taperecorder and comparing with the original is real plus !!! Yes that is highly recomended... And repetition repetition repetition :-)

Good Luck!


Edited by Naruemon - 08 February 2007 at 1:46am
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onebir
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Quote onebir Replybullet Posted: 08 February 2007 at 3:35am
Originally posted by Naruemon

...I try to mimic the sentence said on a tape in full and believe it or not doing that will make you get the tones right even that you could never tell what type of tone a specific word should have


When you ask Chinese people what tone a word is, they almost always have to think about it (& often say it) so I think there's a lot to be said for this approach. After all, if you don't have an instinctive grasp of words' tones, you just won't be able to put sentences together fast enough...
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