Comments on: The importance of tones is inversely proportional to the predictability of what you say https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/ A better way of learning Mandarin Tue, 10 Jun 2025 05:32:30 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: 8 myths about learning Chinese that are holding you back | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-134028 Tue, 10 Jun 2025 05:32:30 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-134028 […] If your teacher, friend or wife can understand you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your tones are great, or that it’s okay to have bad tones, it just means that they know you well enough to be able to guess what you want to say anyway. I explored this question more thoroughly here: The importance of tones is inversely proportional to the predictability of what you say. […]

]]> By: 3 things I wish I had known as an advanced student of Chinese | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-124251 Mon, 14 Oct 2024 10:27:48 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-124251 […] This is not because my tones are bad, it’s because beginners simply don’t say complex things where simple mistakes will throw …. […]

]]> By: The Hacking Chinese guide to Mandarin tones | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-116337 Fri, 19 Jan 2024 19:01:46 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-116337 […] The importance of tones is inversely proportional to the predictability of what you say […]

]]> By: Beyond tīng bu dǒng, part 3: Using what you already know to aid listening comprehension in Chinese - Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-104572 Mon, 28 Nov 2022 17:12:30 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-104572 […] Another example from Mandarin is the fact that native speakers can (usually) still understand what you mean even if your tones are a bit off, at least if they have enough context to rely on. If you’re at the zoo and say that the xiōngmáo (胸毛) are very cute, people will understand that you mean the pandas, not someone’s chest hair. Thus, their prior knowledge and conceptual framework of what you might say makes “panda” a much more likely word, even though you should have said xióngmāo (熊猫). I wrote more about this here: The importance of tones is inversely proportional to the predictability of what you say. […]

]]> By: Tone errors in Mandarin that actually can cause misunderstandings - Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-103732 Sun, 06 Nov 2022 10:23:44 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-103732 […] This is because the importance of tones is inversely related to the predictability of what you say, so if you say something the speaker can mostly guess from context, tones aren’t very important (neither is accurate language in other areas, including spelling when writing). Conversely, if the listener has no clue what you’re talking about, using the correct tones becomes much more important. Read more in The importance of tones is inversely proportional to the predictability of what you say: […]

]]> By: Chinese pronunciation challenge, October 2022 - Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-102015 Tue, 04 Oct 2022 10:16:16 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-102015 […] Naturally, if you’re only going to say things that are expected of you, most people can guess what you want to say based on context, but as soon as you enter into more open-ended exchanges, pronunciation becomes really important. […]

]]> By: A smart method to discover problems with Chinese tones | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-82635 Mon, 13 Sep 2021 19:13:16 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-82635 […] Context matters – When conversing in a language, context matters a lot. This means that you might feel that you can talk with people but still fail quite miserably at minimal pairs bingo. What does this tell you? Basically, it means that the Chinese you speak is understandable in the contexts you use it, but in spite of your pronunciation, not thanks to it. It could very well be that when your Chinese improves further and you start using it in less predictable contexts, people will find it much harder to understand what you’re saying. Pronunciation is for speaking what spelling is for writing: people can probably understand what you write even with bad spelling, but if you also have bad grammar and structure, people will struggle, and correctly spelt texts are much easier to read. I wrote more about context in this article: The importance of tones is inversely proportional to the predictability of what you say. […]

]]> By: Olle Linge https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-60750 Thu, 05 Mar 2020 08:47:27 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-60750 In reply to 罗浩然.

Sounds like a good approach to me! Mimicking is, in my opinion, the best way to approach most pronunciation issues. It does differ a bit from student to student, though, some really don’t pick it up just by mimicking on their own. How old are your students? The younger they are, the better your approach works, I think. It also works best with beginners who haven’t already established bad habits. 🙂

]]> By: 罗浩然 https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-60749 Thu, 05 Mar 2020 08:33:44 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-60749 In reply to Olle Linge.

In my classes I ask students to record themselves and to mimic exactly the lesson phrases.
We do this rather than focus on individual character tones.
After just a few weeks of lessons they can correctly pick out (and reproduce) the tones from learned expressions.
We make clear from the outset that a character or phrase learned without the correct tone is building up serious difficulties for the future, material that will have to be unlearned and relearned correctly.

This is far less laborious than learning character by character. Plus the tonal adjustments are automatically incorporated.
It helps a lot that our learning platform allows them record and re-record sentences and that I can review these as their teacher.

So yes I agree with you completely, learn tones from the start and learn it correctly. Developing that mental space that stores a phrases tone is a new skill that needs to be learned at the get go.
Not knowing a new words tone needs to feel like trying to go asleep knowing you haven’t brushed your teeth.

]]> By: Olle Linge https://www.hackingchinese.com/the-importance-of-tones-is-inversely-proportional-to-the-predictability-of-what-you-say/#comment-57675 Mon, 11 Nov 2019 15:23:41 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=1959#comment-57675 In reply to Jeroen.

I actually wrote two articles about this exact topic a while back, checking how good it would be to use the Android or iOS speech recognition for practising pronunciation. You can check out the first part here:

Using speech recognition to improve Chinese pronunciation, part 1

]]>