Monday, April 17, 2006

Pronounciation (1-10 with audio)

My first(but not last) post with audio. After three months it is high time to start working on pronounciation, with no training partner at the moment I am hoping that the Internet can be my sounding board. Read the full post to hear me counting from 1-10 in Mandarin (ooooOOOHHH).

Many years in manufacturing, Quality systems and programming have taught me never to test the fruits of my own labours. So I am going to try slinging my Mandarin pronounciation blindly at the Internet in the hope of getting some constructive critique, that I can use for improvement.

You can hear me counting from one to ten. I know this is basic but I have just started and haven't done too much much pronouncaition work. The end result was the second of two takes and doesn't sound too bad to my ears, I am pretty sure it will be to yours though. I could of course had continued but ran out of fingers and toes (where did I put that abacus).

Any comments on how to improve would be most welcome. I am most worried about the I tried using the middle of my toungue as per the very helpful advice at Sinosplice but what came out in take one sounded more like a 'death rattle' than a 1st tone.

Please don't try to emulate this if you really want to learn the numbers, you would be much better off listening to this Chinesepod podcast.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, nice pronounciation!

The only one you have to correct is the pronounciation of number 10. You're pronounciating it in the fourth tone, the correct is the second tone.

Anonymous said...

Hi!

Nice pronounciation!

The only one you have to correct is number 10. You're pronounciating it using the 4th tone, when you should use the 2nd.

Unknown said...

Really useful feedback came from the independant Chinesepod forums view topic here I have to agree with the comments and will post a part2 to this post shortly with improved(hopefully) audio, and a full breakdown of what I have learnt.

Anonymous said...

Only just noticed your upload here. You're pronunciation's good, moreso given your lack of language partner. Live on the advantages of CPod. Things to watch: your 十 sounded a bit like 是 because you put an end of sentence intonation on it. Watch your si/se distinction but since the discussion on the forum you've heard that.
It's very hao. I'm hen impressed.