You will learn these things by listening more. Much more than you will do by taking classes or just living in China. Listen as much as you can, all the time, every day. Improving listening ability on Hacking Chinese. Tips and tricks for how to learn Chinese directly in your inbox I've been learning and teaching Chinese for more than a decade. My goal is to help you find a way of learning that works for you.
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I enjoyed listening to this article during dinner quite a lot! I would like to add that, for an advanced learner who occasionally tunes in to Chinese news or similar shows, contractions of terms that the average Chinese person might be familiar with is yet another hurdle to listening.
Amen to that. And so often it seems a word or phrase that is relatively unambiguous gets shortened into something easily confused with other things. Yes, contractions are a real problem, especially in anything formal!
I spent a lot of time listening to news broadcast for a while and most of the passages I gave up on and had to look up where contractions, abbreviations or other succinct ways of expressing something that I would easily have understood in the full form. The more formal it is, the worse it gets! Compared to my better listening of French and Japanese, which at times has even been better than my speaking, I did find it a bit odd that my Chinese listening skill is so much lower than my speaking.
A lack of vocabulary and fully understanding the vocabulary I do know makes it worse. For example, I often run into the situation where they say a word similar to one I know, maybe even sharing a character.
Of course, rarely is a single word the big issue, but this is the example that came to me. When I went to Taiwan, I knew the accent and vocab would be an issue so I spoke in their accent and used their words. Instead of letting your brain get surprised when you encounter non-standard speech, warm up, adapt, and momentarily live in it so your brain is accustomed and ready. Yes, vocabulary is, I would say, the biggest problem with listening ability. You can check out the article series here:.
Chinese listening strategies: Problem analysis. Regarding how to get better, mimicking and otherwise familiarising oneself with other dialects is essential. This happens to me all the time, which is somewhat annoying, but still understandable. This will of course always happen and it happens to native speakers too, but it can still be frustrating.
Cab drivers is a good example. I noticed that cab problem happening even to a native speaker she annoyingly said to a didi driver on the phone, that she could not understand his putonghua, and later even complained to me saying people from that province speak very weird Mandarin she was from Haerbin and the driver was from Xian. I love audio recordings for this reason. I consume enormous amounts of audio material audio books, audio versions of certain magazines, podcasts. I want to be able to provide this for Hacking Chinese, just need to know that enough people really want it.
But still, even at this point, I occasionally miss a whole sentence or even more. Because if I get the context wrong, or fixate on one word e. Everyday really is a school day! I always thought it was just because Chinese, sorry, Mandarin, was a tonal language, or is that only partially the reality?
It struck me some years ago that there is another fundamental difference between the listening skills of a tonal language speaker and those of most Indo-European languages: the former are listening for vowels and the latter, by and large, for consonants.
That lack of attention to the detail of consonants is the corrolary of our relatively poor ability to manipulate tones. I think the reason they mainly referring to speakers of Chinese here drop endings is because of syllable structure more than anything else.
This can be heard sometimes when people insert extra vowels to conform to the syllable structure of their native language. I have never really studied this topic, though, maybe there already are such studies? Oct 24, 2, 0 0. Oct 13, 15, 1 Originally posted by: Amorphus depends who's saying it.
Kadarin Lifer. Nov 23, 44, 9 After about 15 straight minutes of "bing bong wong fong chong bong long.. If you got my ex laughing uncontrollably, it would cause quite a scene, and I had to avoid that at all costs.. Apr 1, 5, Chinese is a written language, not a spoken language. Mandarin is the spoken language. Which I don't think is the one you happen to overheard those two girls speaking.
Sounds more like Cantonese which does sound harsh to the untrained ears. Korean and Japanese don't annoy me at all. They can sound very soft and pleasing to the ears when they say a sentence like Jan 4, 1, 1 I think your confusing mandarin and cantonese. Your probaly listening to cantonese. Its kinda harsh, but its not just that. Its an annoying dialect Many ppl speak it very loud with a lot of crap thrown in like laaa, waaa..
I find it can be annoying. It also depends on the speakers though. When they get hyper or on a cell Nov 28, 4, 0 0. Originally posted by: bleeb Korean can just be as annoying too. Vietnamese is off the wall deep throat action. Jul 4, 10, 1 0. Originally posted by: dquan97 Asian women usually are annoying, regardless of the language they speak. Originally posted by: geckojohn Originally posted by: bleeb Korean can just be as annoying too.
GiLtY Golden Member. Sep 10, 1, 0 0. The yees and waaas Vietnamese, I find extremely annoying. I grew up in an area with a whole lot of Vietnamese speakers, and I still can't stand the sound of that language.
Vietnamese, Cambodian , Chinese and Thai to my untrained ears always sound loud, angry and aggressive. There is something "yappy" about it which I do not find attractive.
I must admit that as much as I love Germany and German people the German language to me always sounds like commands. As does Finnish and Estonian. Hungarian utterly baffles me but I quite like the sound of it. I actually love Nordic languages, but to me Italian is the most beautiful language , musical and sweet to the ears. French is a beautiful language too. I love Portuguese , Welsh and Gaelic too.
And Swahili. Russian can be beautiful but it depends on the person. Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Additional giveaways are planned. Detailed information about all U. Posting Quick Reply - Please Wait. Similar Threads Most beautiful sounding languages? Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, and Essays from one language to another language within seconds. Most annoying sounding language best city, nicest, Lebanese.
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