Comments on: How do Tone-Deaf people learn the Chinese language?

By: Craftylass

Craftylass — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:07:16 +0000

I’m not tone deaf, but to be honest, I don’t hear tones too much within the Chinese language. I hear more rhythm and intonation . . . rising and falling of phrases / collection of ideas as opposed to the rise and fall of individual words.

Most people understand meanings within context. It’s not likely that "tianming" would be used interchangeably in the same sentence, so the meaning would be determined from the rest of the idea.

A few times, things can get confusing, but by and large, context is the key to success. I find consumer goods to be the words most likely to confuse things! Words like "bing" (1-ice, 2-no meaning, 3-bread, 4-sick) get me into trouble if I don’t say them properly due to the possibility of buying completely different items!

Enjoy!

By: sellatieeat

sellatieeat — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:07:16 +0000

tone-deaf??? like as in music wise??
i think people who are tonedeaf and speak english go through the same thing. if they dont undersatnd i’m sure they can use logic and figure out what people are saying..

By: Hello Helsinki!

Hello Helsinki! — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:07:16 +0000

it’s a fact that Chinese people (mostly) have perfect pitch. Which is why they are so good at music, particularly things like violins where pitching is very subtle.
have a look at this page, about 1/4 way down, may clear things up:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/66504
"However, tone deaf people seem to be only disabled when it comes to music, and they can fully interpret the prosody or intonation of human speech. Tone deafness has a strong negative correlation with belonging to societies with tonal languages. This could be evidence that the ability to reproduce and distinguish between notes may be a learned skill, but may conversely suggest that the genetic predisposition towards accurate pitch discrimination may influence the linguistic development of a population towards tonality. A correlation between allele frequencies and linguistic typological features has been recently discovered, supporting the latter hypothesis.

It’s a bit difficult to understand but I believe that it’s saying that a population with a large number of tone deaf people is less likely to develop a tonal language."

By: Elena S

Elena S — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:07:16 +0000

there are no tone-deaf people in China…
you can hear the difference between ‘pre-sent and pre-’sent, don’t you?
tonal difference is also very clear…

the trick is the quicker you learn it, the less money you’ll pay to your teachers…
thus, they have no reason to let you differentiate the tones in two weeks instead of two years…

By: JD

JD — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:07:16 +0000

My parents are native Chinese and my dad is horribly tone-deaf, which is causing some problems now that he’s attempting to learn Erhu, or the Chinese 2-string violin. Really, I dont think tone-deafness and the Chinese language necessarily have that direct a relationship. Perhaps the ability to hear and identify different pitches is a contextual skill as well i.e. my dad can do it when it comes to the Chinese language, but fails spectacularly to show any signs of adequacy when playing the erhu.

By: TuesdayL

TuesdayL — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:07:16 +0000

haha I don’t know. That is a fantastic question.

By: allperils2050

allperils2050 — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:07:16 +0000

If you are deaf, your Mandarin is going to sound whacky, just like English deaf speakers.

No difference.

The poster with the "bing" example is good. He explained it well.