Comments on: Mandarin Tone Tricks

By: Nathan Cain - MandarinMnemonics.com

Nathan Cain - MandarinMnemonics.com — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:13:41 +0000

My blog focuses on teaching the second method mentioned here. Like for instance the work yǒnggǎn (brave): I think of a youngin’ flexing his arm muscles to show how brave he is. The shape his arms make remind me of the 2 third tones for the word.

By: Cindy

Cindy — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 06:49:09 +0000

Interesting to see so many people here and everone has a lot of experiences in learning Mandarin. Seems evryone has kind of ways to memorize tones and characters!

By: Ioe

Ioe — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:21:54 +0000

I’ve just started Mandarin, and I bobbed my head up and down naturally, haha. It makes it so much easier.

By: 8 Mistakes To Avoid When Learning Chinese | The China Expat

8 Mistakes To Avoid When Learning Chinese | The China Expat — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 05:46:51 +0000

[...] You can save yourself some pain and embarassment by mastering tones early on, and these articles might help speed up the process: Master the Tones and Mandarin Tone Tricks [...]

By: Annon

Annon — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:46:15 +0000

As a language learner (First of Japanese, now of Chinese) I know what it is like to struggle in the beginning stages of learning a language. Let me be the first to say: DO NOT LISTEN to arrogant people (Which Prince Roy seems to be one of, forgive me if I’m jumping the gun) that tell you “Mnemonics are stupid, just memorize it, dummy.” Mnemonics are a means to an end. Once they serve their purpose, they will be like a small footprint in your memory that fades with the tides of time, but the link between the two things (sound/tone/character/etc.) will remain. You’re not going to “just memorize” something, you need to find some common basis with what you’re trying to remember. I used such a system to remember more than 2,000 Japanese characters (This has helped in Chinese a great deal). Heck, I still use mnemonics in Japanese if the mnemonic makes enough sense (For example, I was talking with a friend and asked “What is a good way to remember “haba,” which means “width”?” My friend responded, “If someone has a big/wide butt, you might say ‘hubba, hubba!’” What a good idea! I never forgot that word).

In conclusion, don’t pay attention to the the arrogant and cynical criticism of mnemonics. They work and they save time. The correct mnemonic is the silver bullet when it comes to remembering certain vocabulary words. The only caution is to not get overly obsessed with mnemonic tricks that you waste time and perhaps lose sight of your goal of actually learning to read/speak in a foreign language. But I’m very happy I found this through a Google search, this might prove very helpful in my Chinese studies. Thanks for posting this. Annon

By: Reversilver

Reversilver — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:41:11 +0000

I’m taking Mandarin as a freshman in college, and it’s really frustrating. I feel like I sort of have the tones, initials, compounds etc., down and then I correct my audio stuff and it’s all pretty much wrong, very depressing. My chinese teacher had this to say to get the 4th tone right no matter what kind of person you are, think of any swear or f@#k. Then just say the word like you’re swearing, it works really well!:D

By: Donny

Donny — Fri, 23 May 2008 08:28:21 +0000

This book seems to take the same approach as many of the posters hear have mentioned. I have used it for a few months and find it fairly interesting, but not my style, my brother swears by it though. the stories incorporate the character, pronunciation and the tone into each character using different recurring characters for each of the tones. quite an interesting idea. Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters

By: ti

ti — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:45:15 +0000

I'm a native Cantonese speaker and for some reason Mandarin tones completely elude me. I took an introduction course and my teacher completely berated me for my lack of comprehension. It's been 10 years and I have not had any urge to "relearn" this dialect, however since I am to be stationed in the PRC for the remainder of 2008 for my job, I decided that I'll look around the internet for a (nicer) lesson. I'm so glad i found this page!

THanks!

By: Sharon ZY

Sharon ZY — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:26:49 +0000

Fairly enjoyed the article and the comments here... awesome! Everyone shared his/her knowledge here and readers like me do benefit a lot!

I m very interested in developing a method - an effective method in memorising 4 tones in Chinese (actually 5 tones including the neutral one). Am still thinking about the body motion (bob your head) or some other control gestures. Picturing the tones in mind would be a good way too. It is proven that by using some exaggerated body gestures can be of great help in improving the accuracy of tones pronunciations.

Would like to share and discuss more on it!

By: chris(mandarin_student)

chris(mandarin_student) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:40:31 +0000

A bit late to this game, but I found tone marks a bit hard to visualize so I just decided to treat the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 as new letters of the alphabet and found it easy to remember tones from remembered pinyin. ni3 being remembered as a 3 letter word for example.