大家好,
One of the most common struggles I hear from learners is “Mandarin speakers talk so fast”. Today I’ll share 3 tips that helped me overcome this.
Firstly, do native speakers actually speak faster? Yes and no. I’m not sure they speak any faster than a native speaker in another language (for example when you speak in your native tongue).
But native speakers of Mandarin certainly speak faster in daily conversations compared to what you’ve heard in your classrooms or from Chinese teachers.
This makes sense. When you learn a language, it’s helpful to slow things down to learn the fundamentals. This is particularly helpful to learn Mandarin tones and the nuances of pinyin syllables.
But this also means you are not fully prepared for how native speakers speak in daily conversation.
Luckily there are ways to bridge this gap. Let’s dive in.
1. Master Tone Changes
The first tip is to get familiar with tone changes. Many learners are used to learning single characters and tones. But real-life speech is full of multi-character sentences and tone changes.
Tone changes are when the tone of a character changes depending on where the character is relative to the preceding and following characters in a sentence.
There are 2 very common tone change rules in Mandarin Chinese that you need to be aware of.
A. Double Third Tones
When two 3rd tones are placed consecutively, the first 3rd tone changes to a second tone. This occurs very commonly in speech is essential to learn.
Here are some common examples:
B. Tone Changes with 不 (bù):
The character 不, meaning "not" or "no," exhibits tone change rules depending on the tone of the following character.
Whenever 不 is followed by another 4th tone, 不 changes to a second tone. This also occurs very commonly in speech.
Here are some common examples:
When 不 is followed by a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd tone, it doesn’t change.
Here are some common examples:
2. Practice Tone Pairs
PS I’m helping some students this month with personalized feedback to improve your listening comprehension and get you conversational. Message me if you’re interested.
Most words are made up of two characters. Tone pairs refer to when two tones are pronounced back-to-back in speech.
These include the common tone changes mentioned above but also every other 2-pair tone combination in the Mandarin language.
This gives us a total of 20 possible tone pairs in the entire language (including neutral tones). Here is an example table:
Don’t worry about memorizing everything but pay attention to the difference between each tone pair and practice being able to distinguish each of them.
Learning tone pairs is important because this is how these tones would naturally sound in normal speech. Getting familiar with these 20 tone pairs will significantly improve your comprehension especially when Chinese speakers speak fast.
Learn more about how to improve your listening comprehension of fast Chinese speech with the Copy Paste System.
3. Listen To Native Conversations
The reason many learners think Chinese speakers speak too fast is because they learn from educational material where the speaker deliberately speaks slower. This is to help you learn the basics but this is not how Chinese speakers speak in real life.
So what you think is “fast” speaking is often normal for native speakers. And the best way to learn how to understand native speech is to practice listening more to normal speech.
My favorite way to do this is to listen to podcasts and to immerse myself in the language passively when doing other things. Even when I’m not paying attention, I get the benefit of soaking up the rhythm and sounds of the language.
Moreover, I get to practice listening to how words and phrases are said in real conversations, rather than in sterile and isolated “learning conditions” that are not reproducible in real life.
Building on this, listening to real speech prepares you for the many different types of Mandarin accents out there. I encourage you to experiment and challenge yourself by listening to different types of accents.
This won't be easy at first, and it may even seem like you’re listening to a totally different language, but I assure you it will get easier as you listen to more of it. It’s all about getting enough exposure til eventually you just “get it”.
Learn more about how to find the best native conversations, and improve your listening and speaking here.
In Practice
Understanding native Mandarin speech is not easy but I improved my listening comprehension by:
Mastering tone changes
Learning tone pairs
Listening to more native conversations
Learning to do this by yourself is possible but you may waste time and build bad habits. I’m helping some students this month with personalized feedback to improve your listening comprehension and get you conversational. Message me if you’re interested.
熟能生巧,
Danyo
PS Here are some other ways I can help you level up your Chinese:
Copy Paste Speaking Course: The self-directed system I used to learn to get conversational, improve my listening and pronunciation and speak Chinese like native speakers
Language Learner OS: This is a digital system to help organize your language studies, track vocabulary, build connections, stay productive, and learn faster!
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