Does this mean that tones are optional in normal speech? Do songs sometimes contain double meanings due to the added ambiguity (possibly done on purpose?).
I thought that given songs don't have tones, you could ignore tones in normal speech and pronounce everything in first tone. I tried it a bit when I first started learning and nobody could understand me, but maybe my pronunciation was poor back then.
i googled it n apparently mandarin songs ignore the tones in songs but we're learning tones, so though i wish we could ignore them in normal speech, it seems Mandarin more than any other language requires one to pay attention to context.
I think tones still matter in normal speech. wen4 is "to ask," and wen3 is "to kiss." Imagine the confusion from a short sentence like "wo wen ta yixia" ("I'll _ her for a moment.").
Do you mean Chinese songs? Not really; listeners usually rely on context to figure out the meaning.
Posted by pingKL 8/28/12 (8 months ago)thanks.
Posted by Vino 8/30/12 (8 months ago)Does this mean that tones are optional in normal speech? Do songs sometimes contain double meanings due to the added ambiguity (possibly done on purpose?).
I thought that given songs don't have tones, you could ignore tones in normal speech and pronounce everything in first tone. I tried it a bit when I first started learning and nobody could understand me, but maybe my pronunciation was poor back then.
Posted by polymatter 9/1/12 (8 months ago)i googled it n apparently mandarin songs ignore the tones in songs but we're learning tones, so though i wish we could ignore them in normal speech, it seems Mandarin more than any other language requires one to pay attention to context.
here's the site i found http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2010/12/06/tones-in-chinese-songs
Posted by Vino 9/1/12 (8 months ago)I think tones still matter in normal speech. wen4 is "to ask," and wen3 is "to kiss." Imagine the confusion from a short sentence like "wo wen ta yixia" ("I'll _ her for a moment.").
Posted by pingKL 9/2/12 (8 months ago)