I'm just a decade younger. Age doesn't really influence the learning language process. Even Steve Kaufmann admits he learned properly most of his languages after retirement at around 60 yrs old. :)
But he's terrible at all of those languages. The only ones he speaks reasonably well are the ones he learnt much earlier in life. Saying that age doesn't affect the language learning process is completely surreal.
@benjaminyaary8419 it really depends on the individual I would say. Yes, memory retention dwindles as you get older, however, if a person has developed great learning systems by old age, he or she might be even better at learning a language than when they were young
On doing tongue twisters more slowly: a guitar teacher once told me: "practice well and practice slowly. Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes PERMANENT."
Same happened to me, hahaha, after 6 months learning Chinese and thinking I was fluent, one of my good chinese friends told me that speaking to me was just uncomfortable, because my tones were completely off. I had to start all over again. WORTH IT!
22, 18 haha. I started whenI was 59. I am now 78. Indeed after many years one of my teachers tells me that my third tone sounds like a second tone! So I am working on it, with a view to be much better sometime
I think the reason for the myth of 'you can't learn perfect pronunciation as an adult' is because normal (not linquist) people learn languages for practical needs, so the second they get by they simply stop trying to sound perfect. and if people instead did actually continue to try perfecting pronunciation, sounding native would become very common. because it's not magic. it's something EVERYONE does on THEIR native language regardless of language, regardless of 'talent' or how 'lazy' they might be. we all clearly have the tools, and those tools are clearly universal as they work in every language. but we just don't even try after we start getting by with the level we have.
The learning tongue twisters slowly to begin with is exactly the same as learning a jazz icon’s saxophone solo. You can’t simply learn it and quickly master it. You need to concentrate on small blocks at a time then concentrate on the next block. After familiarisation of nuance, you can build up speed until fluent 🎼🎷🎶🎵 Even after 4 years’ Mandarin learning (at 60 years old now), I’ve asked my online teacher to help me with my tones again - and j/w/x/zh/ch/sh 🤭 谢谢你老师 👩🏻🏫 for another great video!
I live in China. Everybody thinks that they can 'teach you Chinese'. I've lived here for 12.5 years and have never found anyone who can teach a foreigner. I've asked hundreds of Chinese teachers who have some kind of certification in teaching foreigners. The problem is, the schools that taught them developed their systems without experimenting on foreigners. It is THEIR idea of how a foreigner should learn. The dilemma is, (1) a native Chinese teacher doesn't know how a Western person thinks, and (2) you don't want a foreigner teaching you who isn't a native speaker.
For basics I prefer a teacher from the same country who understands both languages very well and can help with transition. For advanced stuff native is good.
I'm learning Mandarin at 42 and apparently my accent is good. It's because I listen to people talking in the street, and watch tonnes of street interview channels... that and I studied opera for a bunch of years, so I have a degree in manipulating my voice to mimic tones and syllables in several languages. You need to break down and repeat with good examples, but knowing how your jaw, teeth, tongue and breathe speed changes the sound is the foundation of understanding how to reproduce.
WuLei and Dilireba are my language idols. Love this! I am kind of unusual in that I really want to read - my language goal was to understand the story of Sun Wu Kong and I have been able to read the first two books of an adapted Journey to the West. Now my language goal is to understand half of WuLei's livestreams. I'll do my best. Does your pronunciation course have all the manner of articulation for each sound - this is so vital. I'm a dyslexia tutor and do that with my students. Very interested for this summer! Is it asynchroous? Thanks for this channel as always!
Hey Amanda, it's great that you have all the motivations! And yes, in my pronunciation course, I break down the Mandarin Chinese sound system into 107 lessons, and the thorough system will help you build up the Mandarin tones and sounds in your own voice. Vocal cords, tongue positions, lip shapes, teeth openness, aspiration and volume are everything we talk about in the course. The course content is pre-recorded, so you can study whenever you want to, and the boot camp that starts today is asynchronous (we have DDL for global students though as we do daily missions and teachers do feedback Monday through Saturday). Hope to see you in the boot camp!
@@YourCourageCoach sorry for the late reply! The boot camp has started, but the self-training FYMV course enrollment is still open at RitaChinese.com😊 Our next boot camp is probably going to start in February or March in 2024. Stay tuned🙌
I’ve made many videos teaching Chinese language vividly and in a humorous way. I hope somebody can recommend my videos to those who want to learn Chinese. For beginners, Chinese characters may look complicated. But once you learn about 100 basic radicals, most characters become easy. My method of teaching Chinese is a complement to most channels that teach Chinese.
Some really excellent ideas in this! I have no knowledge of Mandarin at all, but I am an academic linguist (I focus on phonetics/phonology - i.e. sounds!) as well as a language learner - I love the messaging in this! Sounds & accent are so much more mechanical than the average person thinks, and it is absolutely learnable with time & effort. If I were to add on to this personally: - Spend time on phonetics/phonology as a topic in itself first, especially in any other language(s) you speak. It’ll give you a stronger foundation and you’ll be able to make connections. - Search for pre-existing literature! Any language you’re realistically likely to learn will already have their sound system and sound changes described in a grammar - there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. - Practice common sound changes as part of practicing individual words. - (This may or may not apply to Mandarin) Forget how words are written and rely on what you hear. - Much like sounds, you can learn the most common intonation patterns (i.e. in sentences). Practice those as well! This is all general approach stuff that should fit any language. Either way, good luck all!
"giving you the right one and asking you to make it" strangely sometimes works! As if we human beings have this ability built in to figure it out just by watching the guy and hearing him and trying it ourselves. I guess that's how children do it. But the tongue positions 'appears to be' an enormous help. I say 'appears to be' cause I'm totally new to Chinese (total beginner) and I'm still trying to get the sounds right. I'm trying to learn the sounds and mimic/read simple sentences. Basically I'm trying to get the pronunciations right (get the building blocks absolutely right) cause later it would be really difficult to re-learn the sounds if they set in. It's a hobby so I take my time. I have a Chinese friend who sometimes I bother to check on my mimicking abilities (listening, pausing, using the pinyin as a hint, mimicking the sounds exactly ... and repeat) As I said it's a hobby so I take my time and enjoy it.
Just started this. But yes accents matter. The fact is as a beginner you won’t hear accents. It takes a level of proficiency till you are able to hear different accents and understand regions and language. Now to watch the rest.
I think it takes a lot of listening practice, which is what I wish I did instead of diving into vocabulary words. I wish I had watched like 1000 hours of chinese tv before ever learning how to say "hello".
I'm 72 and in the past 4 months I've been to China twice and am learning Mandarin. It seems that in America we understand that people who are not native speakers, will have accents and we don't trip on it. Rita, for instance does not have great pronunciation of English but we can understand her so I'm just trying to communicate....basic communication.
you don't have the same option for tonal languages like Chinese. if you mispronounce something, then you won't be able to achieve "basic communication"
Sure you do. Tones are just mostly-silent final consonants etymologically. English speakers getting tones slightly off but overall in the right ballpark is no different than Chinese struggling with -s, -th, -l, and consonant clusters at the end of our words.
Accent doesn’t matter, in the sense that if you’re trying to learn a language you are trying to learn to communicate with more people! My older brother got to the US when he was 13 years old and he still has an accent sometimes, guess what he speaks perfect English. I still have an accent in English AND Spanish and I grew up in the US and I grew up speaking Spanish. Just focus on being able to express yourself.
Yeah... Chinese is a tad different. Pronunciation is pretty critical to mastering the language. Also, I am tired that people in this era still brush off learning pronunciation. It is part of the language and part of communication. Bad pronunciation can render communication impossible, no matter how perfect your grammar is. And I am tired of needing to adjust my ears every time someone speaks poorly - it's tiresome. :/
I always notice that the people who "don't care about accent" are never people who are learning a tonal language, like Chinese or Vietnamese. Even so, its uncomfortable to talk to people with a heavy accent in any language - because you can't just enjoy what they are saying, you have to decipher WHAT they are saying too, so you can never fully relax into the conversation. The problem is that people will never tell you that you have a heavy, difficult to understand accent because people are polite.
@@codingglides I’m actually learning Chinese and I’ve asked for HONEST feedback multiple times, which is hard to get cuz Chinese people are so lovely they don’t want to hurt my feelings, however I’ve been told even by professors that my pronunciation is very standard, and that I don’t mess up tones, but apparently I mix up “xin” and “xing.” I’m HSK4 rn and have a long way to go. ACCENT doesn’t matter, but in tonal languages yes, intonation matters. Oh and I’m living in Colombia rn and I have a friend here who learned Spanish 8 years ago and he has put ZERO effort into eliminating his American accent and honestly even I don’t understand him sometimes even though he’s fluent when it comes to vocabulary. So yes, putting some effort into pronunciation is important. I just don’t think people should focus on sounding native.
The more you listen to native speakers, the more familiar you get with how the language should sound. I watched Mandarin language films growing up all the time (gongfu films) so it was easier for me to reproduce the sounds than most westerners. I just get myself into trouble when I speak it with native speakers because they assume I'm way more fluent than I am, based on my Beijing, putonghua accent lol...
It drives me crazy,. when people brush off proper pronunciation. It's like saying: okay, I will learn your grammar and words, which is relatively easy, but I will ignore pronunciation, because it's too hard and you, as a native, need to respect different accent. My stance is: if a native can do it, you can do it, too. I don't like the focus on critical age too much, because I learned a proper German accent long after I was seven. I learned French accent in adulthood. But yes, I did spend a solid month on learning the French r only. Learning Chinese I do exactly what Laoma does - watching my tongue position, mimicking the natives. I learn the language with all its perks, including the pronunciation. I sometimes do it well, sometimes my 'sh' is more Polish, than Chinese, but I repeat and repeat and exercise my mouth muscles. It takes helluva lot of time but I live to hear: 'wow, you have great pronunciation' praise :3 Learn the pronunciation! It's a solid and important part of the language - especially in Chinese! For shows, though - I always start with animation, in every language. The pronunciation is clear, but still more or less natural, the speed is not too different from a normal speaking voice but pronunciation is clearer and thus easier to understand, but you still familiarise yourself with a natural spoken language. I highly recommend starting from animation and then moving to dramas and movies- it will be less painful, I promise. :)
@@RitaChinese I love your channel and visit it often, as it keeps me motivated in my learning. As my time is limted and I get scraps of it to learn Chinese here and there, my learning schedule is less than regular, but it's there :) That is why i like to watch your videos - I always listen closely to the Chinese parts, even if I can't spend a whole hour or so on learning. Every little bit helps , so thank you and keep on making the videos! Btw. my love for Chinese started with Wong Fei (Faye Wong)'s songs. Her voice is absolutely mesmerising *.*
Well, I don't know...I tried animation,too,because thought exactly the same as you...then I realised it was not a good idea...maybe I chose wrong animation ( da tou er zi he xiao tou baba) - someone recommended to me because he liked it very much when he was young...but the figures voices were so changed a lot that I wasn't able to understand a lot of words...unfortunately...😢nevertheless in Chinese dramas actors speak quite clear Mandarin, yes maybe a bit fast but at least clear....
@@magdolnavida2717 I recommend Shan He Jian Shin. The VAs are saying words clearly, but quite naturally and you can distinguish every word, even if you don't understand a word in Chinese. Also, it's a great story and animation, not to mention music
@@marikothecheetah9342 wow, thank you very much for your suggestion! I will definitely give it a try right now! Soo happy to get this info, Thanks a lot, again 😊
I couldn’t understand “Does accent matter?” Until Laoma replied then I’m like oh. So that speaks for itself. It matters. (Rita is quite fluent in English I wish I could speak a foreign language as well as she speaks English*) But at the same time if people only misunderstand a few words you say that’s not going to ruin a conversation. And 22 isn’t a kid anymore but it’s still younger than a lot of learners. I’m 46 learning Korean. I think if I were 22 I would care more about accent than I do now. If they can understand me then that’s mission accomplished.
These videos are making me crazy. For some reason I'm getting super hyped with mandarim. I think it's my brain tricking into paying attention to something I have no reason to learn so I won't study what I need but don't want to.
I find the tones not so perplexing as the initial consonents. The consonants in 叫 jiào and 照 zhào sound the same to me. I have the same issue with chu and qu. Sounds the same to me but then Im told Im saying it wrong.
This may not work for everybody but try saying the names “Gina Giovanni” and “Joe Jarvis” a couple times. Note where you put the tip of your tongue for each “j” sound. Note that j can go with an “ee” sound (similar to “Gina Giovanni”) and zh cannot. But zh can go right next to o and a- like the j in “Joe Jarvis.” :)
4:44 ? What are they going on about suddenly? The subtitles seem like gibberish In fact the subtitles seem all over the place in general. Some of them are obviously not right and swear words are sometimes blanked and sometimes not
That is how Chinese teachers teach everything perhaps! They just repeat and expect the students to get it! Certainly that is the traditional way of teaching tai chi
Dang...did you say you started learning English 30 years ago...... I'm so shocked 😅... I honestly thought you were in your early 20's....not even kidding 😅
I find Rita's English fascinating... I think she pronounces every word perfectly or almost perfectly, but for some reason she still has a strong Chinese accent. I think the reason might be her "rational, analytical approach" to learning languages. Maybe she should be doing a bit of shadowing? :)
@@thetheotokos33 well yes of course being able to imitate a native can also be much easier or tougher depending on how distant is the language you are learning from the ones you speak comfortably , and your native language especially. What I find fascinating in Rita's English is that , for example, I am quite fluent in English but my pronunciation is not always right, and I do have an accent.. while her pronunciation is great, but the accent, and a pretty heavy one, still manages to be there. I disagree with Chris when he says that an accent is a matter of pronunciation, I think it is way more a matter of intonation..
Thanks for your suggestions! As someone who started studying English 30 years ago without so much quality and free learning resources and methods, I actually found my English accent has improved a lot over the past 3 years since I moved to the US and had to use a lot of English (Before COVID I didn't need to as I grew up and lived in Beijing) for filming Chinese-teaching videos and life in US. There are obviously a lot that I can do to keep improving, and I hope I'll get time to do it as soon as my work schedule is not as crazy as now haha.
@@RitaChinese I think you only need to give the final touch, as your pronunciation seems already very good, though the ultimate judge should be Chris, being a native speaker... but I thought that the shadow technique is the best for anyone when it comes to imitate natives and getting rid or at least mitigating a foreign accent. I think your case is particular because if I close my eyes and listen I can definitely tell you are Chinese, though you do not mispronounce any word. Anyhow, top respect for anyone who manages to make the journey from English or any "Western Language" to Chinese, or the inverse!
For a while I also wanted to mention this point but I was kind of shy about it. The imperfection/glitch I guess is at 'sound' [very low in the hierarchy to be fixed by shadowing a full sentence] I have a Chinese friend who we practice English with (besides generally being friends and talking to each other), and she is picky and determined enough to pay attention to her accent and *sounds*, I pushed her a couple of times on sounds and she was ok with it, but after watching this video I'll keep pushing (some now and then) ... L and R seem to be troublesome for her (my friend). I'll start writing down and noting the sounds and will work on them 🙃anyways she sometimes records her reading English so we can work on the sounds and compare months later
She still has a strong Chinese accent? Yes, that is a great mystery. It's almost as if she were Chinese or something... Jokes to one side, it's an interesting conundrum. The answer of course, is that she's not pronouncing the words as well as you think, but your brain can't identify what's *off* about what she says. Why that should be the case, well that's a complex discussion...
While living in Vietnam, I was told by a native Chinese speaker (Singaporean) that Vietnamese was much more difficult than Mandarin because incorrect vowel tones usually completely change meaning while in Mandarin they, in his words, just "make you sound funny." This sounde reasonable to me, but is it true?
Vietnamese is a tonal language, too, and some Vietnamese speakers told me that there are actually quite some words in the language sound similar to Chinese, as the historic influence. Different tones represent different meanings, and this applies to any tonal languages, including Mandarin. So it's not just "make you sound funny", but it causes misunderstanding in Mandarin Chinese, too. Native speakers are just not usually aware of the nuances and can understand the speakers' wrong tones sometimes, if they try really hard. But I'd like to see more data or research on the two tonal languages' comparison.
I really don't know where this whole dichotomy between pronunciation and basically the rest of language (grammar, semantics, etc.) comes from in the language learning world... especially with native English speakers, sorry to say. Like, it's okay to respect the grammar rules of another language but not the pronunciation, arguably the very _soul_ of the language? If anyone can explain this phenomenon please help me out, because it's just baffling.
People know in their bones that they can't improve their pronunciation the way they want to and get frustrated. Despite what Chris says, very few people are as phonetically gifted as him. Most people know their pronunciation sucks and don't want to admit that it matters. It's ego-protection. People who are crap at grammar say the same thing about grammar, don't they? I do agree that the problem is much keener with pronunciation, though.
Especially with native English speakers? No, that’s not true at all. Just look at people who speak English as a second language. They typically have strong accents even after living here for a decade or sometimes several decades. That is, unless they come here before about the age of 18.
The irony of him talking about how important it is to have a native accent when speaking to someone with a strong Chinese accent with terrible English pronunciation (yet it is still understandable). Having a native accent is clearly nowhere near as important as he's trying to make it out to be. It's cool if you can pull it off. But it's not essential or important.
There are levels to what is needed for comprehension in a language. The phonetics and phonology of languages like Chinese and Yorùbá (my native tongue) have much more at stake, from an English speaker's standpoint. So you can sh*t on her accent all you want but the comparison isn't even close.
If you meet beginner English students whose first language is Chinese you’ll definitely notice that Rita’s accent is significantly easier to understand. It’s only a matter of time until she smooths it our even further and sounds like a native 😁💪
@@carlinyohei and yet she can already be perfectly understood. So whether or not she eventually ends up sounding like a "native" English speaker (which almost never happens with native Chinese speakers) is already irrelevant. It then raises the question of what a "native" sounds like? What type of "native"? American, British, Australian, Indian? and of those which variety? The simple answer is, it doesn't matter. As long as you can be understood, you don't need to sound like a "native" whatever that means.
Don’t let anyone tell you you’re too old! ❤❤
Fresh in my 40s, learning Chinese. In my 30s I learned French. :D
加油！
I was 38 when I started learning Chinese
你太老了你～～~~! Ok totally kidding.
Everyone:
Americans: "Got anymore of dem 'R colored vowels?"
I started learning Mandarin at 51 years old. It’s never too late to learn something new.
I'm just a decade younger. Age doesn't really influence the learning language process. Even Steve Kaufmann admits he learned properly most of his languages after retirement at around 60 yrs old. :)
But he's terrible at all of those languages. The only ones he speaks reasonably well are the ones he learnt much earlier in life. Saying that age doesn't affect the language learning process is completely surreal.
@learnjapanesewithsam2469 so what's your point?
@@gamingjay3088probably to keep in mind that it will be more difficult in old age to learn anything, and that therefor you must have more patience
@benjaminyaary8419 it really depends on the individual I would say. Yes, memory retention dwindles as you get older, however, if a person has developed great learning systems by old age, he or she might be even better at learning a language than when they were young
On doing tongue twisters more slowly: a guitar teacher once told me: "practice well and practice slowly. Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes PERMANENT."
Exactly. Tempo is just speeding up the things you've learned doing it slowly and accurately.
Same happened to me, hahaha, after 6 months learning Chinese and thinking I was fluent, one of my good chinese friends told me that speaking to me was just uncomfortable, because my tones were completely off. I had to start all over again. WORTH IT!
Of course it is. And yes, having to listen to badly pronounced words is really tiresome.
22, 18 haha. I started whenI was 59. I am now 78. Indeed after many years one of my teachers tells me that my third tone sounds like a second tone! So I am working on it, with a view to be much better sometime
I think the reason for the myth of 'you can't learn perfect pronunciation as an adult' is because normal (not linquist) people learn languages for practical needs, so the second they get by they simply stop trying to sound perfect. and if people instead did actually continue to try perfecting pronunciation, sounding native would become very common.
because it's not magic. it's something EVERYONE does on THEIR native language regardless of language, regardless of 'talent' or how 'lazy' they might be. we all clearly have the tools, and those tools are clearly universal as they work in every language. but we just don't even try after we start getting by with the level we have.
That’s a really a good point!
YES! I totally agree.
😊😊😊
😊
I have never thought that accent really matters but then I recalled that I change back to my regional accent when I talk to friends and family.
The learning tongue twisters slowly to begin with is exactly the same as learning a jazz icon’s saxophone solo.
You can’t simply learn it and quickly master it. You need to concentrate on small blocks at a time then concentrate on the next block.
After familiarisation of nuance, you can build up speed until fluent 🎼🎷🎶🎵
Even after 4 years’ Mandarin learning (at 60 years old now), I’ve asked my online teacher to help me with my tones again - and j/w/x/zh/ch/sh 🤭
谢谢你老师 👩🏻🏫 for another great video!
You are my hero. I thought learning Chinese at 40 is too late XD
@@marikothecheetah9342 It’s never too late to learn, my friend! 🧠👨🏻🎓🎷
I live in China. Everybody thinks that they can 'teach you Chinese'. I've lived here for 12.5 years and have never found anyone who can teach a foreigner. I've asked hundreds of Chinese teachers who have some kind of certification in teaching foreigners. The problem is, the schools that taught them developed their systems without experimenting on foreigners. It is THEIR idea of how a foreigner should learn. The dilemma is, (1) a native Chinese teacher doesn't know how a Western person thinks, and (2) you don't want a foreigner teaching you who isn't a native speaker.
For basics I prefer a teacher from the same country who understands both languages very well and can help with transition. For advanced stuff native is good.
I'm learning Mandarin at 42 and apparently my accent is good. It's because I listen to people talking in the street, and watch tonnes of street interview channels... that and I studied opera for a bunch of years, so I have a degree in manipulating my voice to mimic tones and syllables in several languages. You need to break down and repeat with good examples, but knowing how your jaw, teeth, tongue and breathe speed changes the sound is the foundation of understanding how to reproduce.
Wow, Rita. You'd be a great podcaster.
挺有趣的视频。我刚来到中国时，没人听懂我讲的话，我这样才了解中文音调的意义。该小城市的当地人不听惯外国口音，所以改善我自己的发音和音调由我个人负责。我觉得模仿本地人是最好方法之一，不用说天天都练习。辛苦老师们了~
WuLei and Dilireba are my language idols. Love this! I am kind of unusual in that I really want to read - my language goal was to understand the story of Sun Wu Kong and I have been able to read the first two books of an adapted Journey to the West. Now my language goal is to understand half of WuLei's livestreams. I'll do my best. Does your pronunciation course have all the manner of articulation for each sound - this is so vital. I'm a dyslexia tutor and do that with my students. Very interested for this summer! Is it asynchroous? Thanks for this channel as always!
Hey Amanda, it's great that you have all the motivations! And yes, in my pronunciation course, I break down the Mandarin Chinese sound system into 107 lessons, and the thorough system will help you build up the Mandarin tones and sounds in your own voice. Vocal cords, tongue positions, lip shapes, teeth openness, aspiration and volume are everything we talk about in the course. The course content is pre-recorded, so you can study whenever you want to, and the boot camp that starts today is asynchronous (we have DDL for global students though as we do daily missions and teachers do feedback Monday through Saturday). Hope to see you in the boot camp!
picked up an interesting expression from Chris. "it's going to give you way more bang for your buck"
Haha I learned it from this interview, too!
Head over to ritachinese.com to sign up to get perfect Mandarin pronunciation and tones in YOUR natural voice🙌
I bought your course for $697 and I can't use it. How do I get it to work?
@@DifferentDose please check out your email! Our team has replied!
@@DifferentDose I believe you used another email address to purchase the course and register your course account😊
Is it too late for the current session?
@@YourCourageCoach sorry for the late reply! The boot camp has started, but the self-training FYMV course enrollment is still open at RitaChinese.com😊 Our next boot camp is probably going to start in February or March in 2024. Stay tuned🙌
Wow, it's amazing to know Naran is your student!!! Creation gods is a blockbuster in China, congratulations!
I started my journey with Chinese last year, when I was 40. Not too late for any age, but Chinese is my third foreign language so maybe it helps
I’ve made many videos teaching Chinese language vividly and in a humorous way. I hope somebody can recommend my videos to those who want to learn Chinese. For beginners, Chinese characters may look complicated. But once you learn about 100 basic radicals, most characters become easy. My method of teaching Chinese is a complement to most channels that teach Chinese.
Funny couple sitting together! How do they manage not to laugh during the chat/interview?! lol😄
😂 I had forgot they are a couple until the middle of the video when she said "you are always talking" 😂 I was 对！they are married ❤
Some really excellent ideas in this! I have no knowledge of Mandarin at all, but I am an academic linguist (I focus on phonetics/phonology - i.e. sounds!) as well as a language learner - I love the messaging in this! Sounds & accent are so much more mechanical than the average person thinks, and it is absolutely learnable with time & effort. If I were to add on to this personally:
- Spend time on phonetics/phonology as a topic in itself first, especially in any other language(s) you speak. It’ll give you a stronger foundation and you’ll be able to make connections.
- Search for pre-existing literature! Any language you’re realistically likely to learn will already have their sound system and sound changes described in a grammar - there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
- Practice common sound changes as part of practicing individual words.
- (This may or may not apply to Mandarin) Forget how words are written and rely on what you hear.
- Much like sounds, you can learn the most common intonation patterns (i.e. in sentences). Practice those as well!
This is all general approach stuff that should fit any language. Either way, good luck all!
Now imagine a native English speaker and teacher telling a student in the US that there's only two sounds for each vowel, period. x'D
很好的分享，谢谢两位老师。但如果有中文字幕配上会变得完美❤
"giving you the right one and asking you to make it" strangely sometimes works! As if we human beings have this ability built in to figure it out just by watching the guy and hearing him and trying it ourselves. I guess that's how children do it. But the tongue positions 'appears to be' an enormous help. I say 'appears to be' cause I'm totally new to Chinese (total beginner) and I'm still trying to get the sounds right. I'm trying to learn the sounds and mimic/read simple sentences. Basically I'm trying to get the pronunciations right (get the building blocks absolutely right) cause later it would be really difficult to re-learn the sounds if they set in. It's a hobby so I take my time. I have a Chinese friend who sometimes I bother to check on my mimicking abilities (listening, pausing, using the pinyin as a hint, mimicking the sounds exactly ... and repeat) As I said it's a hobby so I take my time and enjoy it.
When people say you are too old, I always understand that as "at your age, you do not have 4 hours per day to dedicate for a hobby".
Awesome. Would love to see this done in Chinese in English subs!
We did a more extensive interview in Chinese one year ago - ruclips.net/video/bbn63ZqrC6M/видео.html
Epic! Will watch, thank you
Fun video....thanks.
Interesting interview. Not really convinced I can learn, but it was some good food for thought.
Haha it takes time, but nothing is impossible!
Maybe, but Mandarin i really hard to understand.@@RitaChinese
Just started this. But yes accents matter. The fact is as a beginner you won’t hear accents. It takes a level of proficiency till you are able to hear different accents and understand regions and language. Now to watch the rest.
I think it takes a lot of listening practice, which is what I wish I did instead of diving into vocabulary words. I wish I had watched like 1000 hours of chinese tv before ever learning how to say "hello".
I'm 72 and in the past 4 months I've been to China twice and am learning Mandarin. It seems that in America we understand that people who are not native speakers, will have accents and we don't trip on it. Rita, for instance does not have great pronunciation of English but we can understand her so I'm just trying to communicate....basic communication.
Same basic communication.
you don't have the same option for tonal languages like Chinese. if you mispronounce something, then you won't be able to achieve "basic communication"
Sure you do. Tones are just mostly-silent final consonants etymologically. English speakers getting tones slightly off but overall in the right ballpark is no different than Chinese struggling with -s, -th, -l, and consonant clusters at the end of our words.
Accent doesn’t matter, in the sense that if you’re trying to learn a language you are trying to learn to communicate with more people! My older brother got to the US when he was 13 years old and he still has an accent sometimes, guess what he speaks perfect English.
I still have an accent in English AND Spanish and I grew up in the US and I grew up speaking Spanish. Just focus on being able to express yourself.
Yeah... Chinese is a tad different. Pronunciation is pretty critical to mastering the language.
Also, I am tired that people in this era still brush off learning pronunciation. It is part of the language and part of communication. Bad pronunciation can render communication impossible, no matter how perfect your grammar is.
And I am tired of needing to adjust my ears every time someone speaks poorly - it's tiresome. :/
I always notice that the people who "don't care about accent" are never people who are learning a tonal language, like Chinese or Vietnamese. Even so, its uncomfortable to talk to people with a heavy accent in any language - because you can't just enjoy what they are saying, you have to decipher WHAT they are saying too, so you can never fully relax into the conversation. The problem is that people will never tell you that you have a heavy, difficult to understand accent because people are polite.
@@codingglides I’m actually learning Chinese and I’ve asked for HONEST feedback multiple times, which is hard to get cuz Chinese people are so lovely they don’t want to hurt my feelings, however I’ve been told even by professors that my pronunciation is very standard, and that I don’t mess up tones, but apparently I mix up “xin” and “xing.”
I’m HSK4 rn and have a long way to go.
ACCENT doesn’t matter, but in tonal languages yes, intonation matters.
Oh and I’m living in Colombia rn and I have a friend here who learned Spanish 8 years ago and he has put ZERO effort into eliminating his American accent and honestly even I don’t understand him sometimes even though he’s fluent when it comes to vocabulary. So yes, putting some effort into pronunciation is important. I just don’t think people should focus on sounding native.
The more you listen to native speakers, the more familiar you get with how the language should sound. I watched Mandarin language films growing up all the time (gongfu films) so it was easier for me to reproduce the sounds than most westerners. I just get myself into trouble when I speak it with native speakers because they assume I'm way more fluent than I am, based on my Beijing, putonghua accent lol...
It drives me crazy,. when people brush off proper pronunciation. It's like saying: okay, I will learn your grammar and words, which is relatively easy, but I will ignore pronunciation, because it's too hard and you, as a native, need to respect different accent.
My stance is: if a native can do it, you can do it, too. I don't like the focus on critical age too much, because I learned a proper German accent long after I was seven. I learned French accent in adulthood. But yes, I did spend a solid month on learning the French r only.
Learning Chinese I do exactly what Laoma does - watching my tongue position, mimicking the natives. I learn the language with all its perks, including the pronunciation. I sometimes do it well, sometimes my 'sh' is more Polish, than Chinese, but I repeat and repeat and exercise my mouth muscles. It takes helluva lot of time but I live to hear: 'wow, you have great pronunciation' praise :3
Learn the pronunciation! It's a solid and important part of the language - especially in Chinese! For shows, though - I always start with animation, in every language. The pronunciation is clear, but still more or less natural, the speed is not too different from a normal speaking voice but pronunciation is clearer and thus easier to understand, but you still familiarise yourself with a natural spoken language. I highly recommend starting from animation and then moving to dramas and movies- it will be less painful, I promise. :)
Thanks for sharing! Inspiring stories👏
@@RitaChinese I love your channel and visit it often, as it keeps me motivated in my learning. As my time is limted and I get scraps of it to learn Chinese here and there, my learning schedule is less than regular, but it's there :) That is why i like to watch your videos - I always listen closely to the Chinese parts, even if I can't spend a whole hour or so on learning. Every little bit helps , so thank you and keep on making the videos!
Btw. my love for Chinese started with Wong Fei (Faye Wong)'s songs. Her voice is absolutely mesmerising *.*
Well, I don't know...I tried animation,too,because thought exactly the same as you...then I realised it was not a good idea...maybe I chose wrong animation ( da tou er zi he xiao tou baba) - someone recommended to me because he liked it very much when he was young...but the figures voices were so changed a lot that I wasn't able to understand a lot of words...unfortunately...😢nevertheless in Chinese dramas actors speak quite clear Mandarin, yes maybe a bit fast but at least clear....
@@magdolnavida2717 I recommend Shan He Jian Shin. The VAs are saying words clearly, but quite naturally and you can distinguish every word, even if you don't understand a word in Chinese. Also, it's a great story and animation, not to mention music
@@marikothecheetah9342 wow, thank you very much for your suggestion! I will definitely give it a try right now! Soo happy to get this info, Thanks a lot, again 😊
laoma > xiaoma
One is a perfectionist, the other is more like that's enough for entertaining. Both have their nice communities
I couldn’t understand “Does accent matter?” Until Laoma replied then I’m like oh. So that speaks for itself. It matters. (Rita is quite fluent in English I wish I could speak a foreign language as well as she speaks English*)
But at the same time if people only misunderstand a few words you say that’s not going to ruin a conversation. And 22 isn’t a kid anymore but it’s still younger than a lot of learners. I’m 46 learning Korean. I think if I were 22 I would care more about accent than I do now. If they can understand me then that’s mission accomplished.
¿Hay algún vídeo de Rita hablando en español? 😉
I tried once😆 Speaking ONLY Spanish for 24 hours in Mexico!
ruclips.net/video/6LJW3Lyg1MA/видео.html
These videos are making me crazy. For some reason I'm getting super hyped with mandarim. I think it's my brain tricking into paying attention to something I have no reason to learn so I won't study what I need but don't want to.
Fong sai yuk 2 in Cantonese plz rita
Anything but the Beijing accent unless you want to sound like you're hacking up a lung.
Dont let anybody that you're too old
Rita are you also taking classes to master the American or English accent as well?😊
Haha I wish I had time to do it! And Spanish is always on the top of my list😂
I would love if it if you eventually busted out a perfect NYC accent haha @@RitaChinese
Try starting with Spanish 'hard R' ! 🤭 @@RitaChinese {I'm under the impression that it's TOO HARD for native Chinese}
@@RitaChinese you are doing great!
"Perfect practice makes perfect." - Vince Lombardi
Practice the wrong thing and you'll become perfectly wrong.
I find the tones not so perplexing as the initial consonents. The consonants in 叫 jiào and 照 zhào sound the same to me. I have the same issue with chu and qu. Sounds the same to me but then Im told Im saying it wrong.
This may not work for everybody but try saying the names “Gina Giovanni” and “Joe Jarvis” a couple times. Note where you put the tip of your tongue for each “j” sound. Note that j can go with an “ee” sound (similar to “Gina Giovanni”) and zh cannot. But zh can go right next to o and a- like the j in “Joe Jarvis.” :)
4:44 ? What are they going on about suddenly? The subtitles seem like gibberish
In fact the subtitles seem all over the place in general. Some of them are obviously not right and swear words are sometimes blanked and sometimes not
That is how Chinese teachers teach everything perhaps! They just repeat and expect the students to get it! Certainly that is the traditional way of teaching tai chi
Dang...did you say you started learning English 30 years ago......
I'm so shocked 😅...
I honestly thought you were in your early 20's....not even kidding 😅
I'm 50, am I too old to learn Mandarin?
No 😌💪
No.
No! We have students who are in their 60's or 70's in our pronunciation and speaking courses!
I started learning Chinese at 73. Made a lot of progress in 2 years. But it is a lot of work EVERY DAY.
I find Rita's English fascinating... I think she pronounces every word perfectly or almost perfectly, but for some reason she still has a strong Chinese accent. I think the reason might be her "rational, analytical approach" to learning languages. Maybe she should be doing a bit of shadowing? :)
@@thetheotokos33 well yes of course being able to imitate a native can also be much easier or tougher depending on how distant is the language you are learning from the ones you speak comfortably , and your native language especially.
What I find fascinating in Rita's English is that , for example, I am quite fluent in English but my pronunciation is not always right, and I do have an accent.. while her pronunciation is great, but the accent, and a pretty heavy one, still manages to be there.
I disagree with Chris when he says that an accent is a matter of pronunciation, I think it is way more a matter of intonation..
Thanks for your suggestions! As someone who started studying English 30 years ago without so much quality and free learning resources and methods, I actually found my English accent has improved a lot over the past 3 years since I moved to the US and had to use a lot of English (Before COVID I didn't need to as I grew up and lived in Beijing) for filming Chinese-teaching videos and life in US. There are obviously a lot that I can do to keep improving, and I hope I'll get time to do it as soon as my work schedule is not as crazy as now haha.
@@RitaChinese I think you only need to give the final touch, as your pronunciation seems already very good, though the ultimate judge should be Chris, being a native speaker... but I thought that the shadow technique is the best for anyone when it comes to imitate natives and getting rid or at least mitigating a foreign accent. I think your case is particular because if I close my eyes and listen I can definitely tell you are Chinese, though you do not mispronounce any word.
Anyhow, top respect for anyone who manages to make the journey from English or any "Western Language" to Chinese, or the inverse!
For a while I also wanted to mention this point but I was kind of shy about it. The imperfection/glitch I guess is at 'sound' [very low in the hierarchy to be fixed by shadowing a full sentence] I have a Chinese friend who we practice English with (besides generally being friends and talking to each other), and she is picky and determined enough to pay attention to her accent and *sounds*, I pushed her a couple of times on sounds and she was ok with it, but after watching this video I'll keep pushing (some now and then) ... L and R seem to be troublesome for her (my friend). I'll start writing down and noting the sounds and will work on them 🙃anyways she sometimes records her reading English so we can work on the sounds and compare months later
She still has a strong Chinese accent? Yes, that is a great mystery. It's almost as if she were Chinese or something...
Jokes to one side, it's an interesting conundrum. The answer of course, is that she's not pronouncing the words as well as you think, but your brain can't identify what's *off* about what she says. Why that should be the case, well that's a complex discussion...
While living in Vietnam, I was told by a native Chinese speaker (Singaporean) that Vietnamese was much more difficult than Mandarin because incorrect vowel tones usually completely change meaning while in Mandarin they, in his words, just "make you sound funny." This sounde reasonable to me, but is it true?
Vietnamese is a tonal language, too, and some Vietnamese speakers told me that there are actually quite some words in the language sound similar to Chinese, as the historic influence. Different tones represent different meanings, and this applies to any tonal languages, including Mandarin. So it's not just "make you sound funny", but it causes misunderstanding in Mandarin Chinese, too. Native speakers are just not usually aware of the nuances and can understand the speakers' wrong tones sometimes, if they try really hard. But I'd like to see more data or research on the two tonal languages' comparison.
What's up with the subtitles at 4:45? Lol
I really don't know where this whole dichotomy between pronunciation and basically the rest of language (grammar, semantics, etc.) comes from in the language learning world... especially with native English speakers, sorry to say. Like, it's okay to respect the grammar rules of another language but not the pronunciation, arguably the very _soul_ of the language? If anyone can explain this phenomenon please help me out, because it's just baffling.
People know in their bones that they can't improve their pronunciation the way they want to and get frustrated. Despite what Chris says, very few people are as phonetically gifted as him. Most people know their pronunciation sucks and don't want to admit that it matters. It's ego-protection. People who are crap at grammar say the same thing about grammar, don't they? I do agree that the problem is much keener with pronunciation, though.
Especially with native English speakers? No, that’s not true at all. Just look at people who speak English as a second language. They typically have strong accents even after living here for a decade or sometimes several decades. That is, unless they come here before about the age of 18.
Well if you're talking about 20 year olds then I'm doomed. :( I didn't even start till I was 50.
On YCLC podcast Chris said 80% of his tones were wrong, now he's saying "most of them were wrong."
We need white lies to keep us optimistic?
Where’s the contradiction? 80^ is most.
Started my second language at 16. Started my third language at 26. Starting my fourth one in my 30s. Not going to stop. 🫣
🚫NO PROFANITY
The irony of him talking about how important it is to have a native accent when speaking to someone with a strong Chinese accent with terrible English pronunciation (yet it is still understandable). Having a native accent is clearly nowhere near as important as he's trying to make it out to be. It's cool if you can pull it off. But it's not essential or important.
There are levels to what is needed for comprehension in a language. The phonetics and phonology of languages like Chinese and Yorùbá (my native tongue) have much more at stake, from an English speaker's standpoint. So you can sh*t on her accent all you want but the comparison isn't even close.
Can you elaborate on this? In what sense do Chinese and Yoruba have more at stake?@@musical_lolu4811
If you meet beginner English students whose first language is Chinese you’ll definitely notice that Rita’s accent is significantly easier to understand. It’s only a matter of time until she smooths it our even further and sounds like a native 😁💪
@@carlinyohei and yet she can already be perfectly understood. So whether or not she eventually ends up sounding like a "native" English speaker (which almost never happens with native Chinese speakers) is already irrelevant. It then raises the question of what a "native" sounds like? What type of "native"? American, British, Australian, Indian? and of those which variety? The simple answer is, it doesn't matter. As long as you can be understood, you don't need to sound like a "native" whatever that means.