This is a bit overdue, but today I'm going to give you all a little background on Chinese tones. For my Chinese-speaking friends, this hopefully isn't news to you.
For those of you unfamiliar with Mandarin, you may ask:
"Hey Nicole, what are those seemingly arbitrary accent marks that are over all of your transliterations?"
And then I would respond:
"Ah, funny you should ask! Those are tone marks, also know as the bane of my existence!"
To give a brief introduction, Chinese is a tonal language. Each of its many dialects has anywhere from 3 to 9 tones. Mandarin only has 4*, whereas Cantonese has 9. So what exactly does that mean? Well, as a language develops, in order to increase its lexicon (vocabulary) there are two options: 1) increase the number of words 2) use different tones to differentiate between words with the same sound. Chinese adapted the latter. Why some dialects have more than others relates to its level of development--Mandarin has less since it adopted 2-character words along the way in order to help make these distinctions.
Here are the 4* tones:
1st: high level tone
2nd: rising tone
3rd: falling-rising tone
4th: falling tone
* (it should be noted here that there's also a 5th, or "neutral" tone)
For a more in depth explanation with audio clips, please go here. This site has the example most people give, which is "ma," which means "mother" (1), "hemp" (2), "horse" (3), and "scold" (4). However, being that Chinese vocabulary and characters are already so difficult, I oftentimes can't manage to study or remember the tones. Some people will tell you that's okay, since you learn tones by hearing/using them, and that people will understand things in context. This is mostly true, but then sometimes you bump into a problem like this:
Last weekend I was out with my teacher and another classmate, and she pointed out some bamboo. I wanted to ask where you could go see pandas, so I said: “ní zài nălĭ kěyĭ qù kàn xiōngmáo?" She stopped, looked at me, and asked if I meant "xióngmāo." I thought about it, and remembered that "xióngmāo" (熊猫) means panda. When I asked her what "xiōngmáo" (胸毛) meant, she told me it was "chest hair." So yes, that was embarrassing. Maybe teachers should give that example in class to drive the point home.
Another fun example is whereas "wèn" (问) means "to ask," "wěn" (吻) means "to kiss." I sincerely hope that I haven't said "qĭng wěn" (may I kiss) in the past when asking for directions. It is, however, distinctly possible.
Yesterday in class, our teacher told us that we had an essay due next Monday. We were confused, since we thought we only had an essay due every OTHER week. So to clarify she asked "měigé yī gè xīngqī?" At this point I was very confused, since I thought she was saying "every week." She wasn't, though. Whereas "měigè" means "every," "měigé" means "at intervals," so in this case, "every other week."
In sum, tones DO matter. I can only imagine all of the atrocious things I've unintentionally said since coming here. No wonder people find me so entertaining--it must be like watching an ape spout out gibberish...
For those of you unfamiliar with Mandarin, you may ask:
"Hey Nicole, what are those seemingly arbitrary accent marks that are over all of your transliterations?"
And then I would respond:
"Ah, funny you should ask! Those are tone marks, also know as the bane of my existence!"
To give a brief introduction, Chinese is a tonal language. Each of its many dialects has anywhere from 3 to 9 tones. Mandarin only has 4*, whereas Cantonese has 9. So what exactly does that mean? Well, as a language develops, in order to increase its lexicon (vocabulary) there are two options: 1) increase the number of words 2) use different tones to differentiate between words with the same sound. Chinese adapted the latter. Why some dialects have more than others relates to its level of development--Mandarin has less since it adopted 2-character words along the way in order to help make these distinctions.
Here are the 4* tones:
1st: high level tone
2nd: rising tone
3rd: falling-rising tone
4th: falling tone
* (it should be noted here that there's also a 5th, or "neutral" tone)
For a more in depth explanation with audio clips, please go here. This site has the example most people give, which is "ma," which means "mother" (1), "hemp" (2), "horse" (3), and "scold" (4). However, being that Chinese vocabulary and characters are already so difficult, I oftentimes can't manage to study or remember the tones. Some people will tell you that's okay, since you learn tones by hearing/using them, and that people will understand things in context. This is mostly true, but then sometimes you bump into a problem like this:
Last weekend I was out with my teacher and another classmate, and she pointed out some bamboo. I wanted to ask where you could go see pandas, so I said: “ní zài nălĭ kěyĭ qù kàn xiōngmáo?" She stopped, looked at me, and asked if I meant "xióngmāo." I thought about it, and remembered that "xióngmāo" (熊猫) means panda. When I asked her what "xiōngmáo" (胸毛) meant, she told me it was "chest hair." So yes, that was embarrassing. Maybe teachers should give that example in class to drive the point home.
Another fun example is whereas "wèn" (问) means "to ask," "wěn" (吻) means "to kiss." I sincerely hope that I haven't said "qĭng wěn" (may I kiss) in the past when asking for directions. It is, however, distinctly possible.
Yesterday in class, our teacher told us that we had an essay due next Monday. We were confused, since we thought we only had an essay due every OTHER week. So to clarify she asked "měigé yī gè xīngqī?" At this point I was very confused, since I thought she was saying "every week." She wasn't, though. Whereas "měigè" means "every," "měigé" means "at intervals," so in this case, "every other week."
In sum, tones DO matter. I can only imagine all of the atrocious things I've unintentionally said since coming here. No wonder people find me so entertaining--it must be like watching an ape spout out gibberish...
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