Chinese languages

Hi,

I have recently started learning Mandarin Chinese by doing the Pimsleur Mandarin audio training. While I find it quite easy to learn this way, I am a bit worried about the quality - especially since my brother, who gets training from a Chinese woman, seems to pronounce some words different from me.

Does anyone here have any experience with the Pimsleur training?

Cheers,

Bart

There are probably a few reasons why they might be pronouncning it different from a native speaker. It could be the quality of the tape or hte person on their might not be a native speaker to mandarin and pronounce the tones differently.

Also, tones are very important in the chinese language, but you can still get what a sentence means without them. For example: When a non-native speaker of mandarin listens to a native speaker and hears a sentence. We can sometimes understand the whole sentence without actually listening to the tones, like I do that.

If you say a word individually, like "ma". That could mean horse, mum, question or another thing. If you say "ni hao ma?", obviously you know it means "how are you?" because when they are talking to you, you know you aint a horse.

Before you start to listen to mandarin tapes, make sure you learn how to pronounce the words first. "Never jump into a river without seeing the bottom". A good way to learn how to pronounce is with phrase booklets. Most tell you how to pronounce and what they sound like

ai sounds like eye

ma, well that sounds like how it is written. same as ba

didi is like how it is written, dee dee

umm yeh, you need a more professional talk about prounounciation because im sort of new/old to mandarin myself.

Hi Bart!

Can you descibe those differences you hear? There is quite a difference in how people from the South and the North typically pronounce Mandarin (putonghua). Examples:

If your brother (or your tapes) pronounce
zh = z = j
sh = s = x
r = y
then the speaker is most likely from the South.

If the speaker pronounces neutral tone syllables as full tone ones, ditto, i.e he/ she could be from e.g. Taiwan.

If he/ she pronounces the y in ying and the e in feng as a oo (fung), then I bet his/ her background is Cantonese.

What I'm trying to say by this is: Maybe it's not that one of the pronunciations is wrong but it might just be a regional difference.

Regards,
Aurelio

I have recently started learning Mandarin Chinese by doing the Pimsleur Mandarin audio training. While I find it quite easy to learn this way, I am a bit worried about the quality - especially since my brother, who gets training from a Chinese woman, seems to pronounce some words different from me.

Does anyone here have any experience with the Pimsleur training?

I know I'm weighing in a bit late. But I've had the same experience with Pimsleur Mandarin. Granted, only a few, and I must stress only a few words are pronounced different by my native Chinese speaking friends.

Again, these are people who are from and have spent their entire lives in China. So I trust them when they correct my pronunciation. But for the most part, Pimsleur has been a great learning tool. I use it in conjunction with other audio programs, books, and of course my friends who help to teach me their language.

I've tried Pimsleur too.

If I'm not wrong, the demonstration in Pimsleur is the "standard". The "problem" is that most Chinese in China do not speak the "standard" Mandarin. Instead, their own version (which is heavily influenced by their dialects") can cause some confusion to a foreigner.

We can sometimes understand the whole sentence without actually listening to the tones, like I do that.