How Do You Remember tones in languages?

French tones
In French I use the word eleve which has an upward diagonal above the first tone, a high note, the Chinese would say rising. The second e had a diagonal falling to the right above the letter e. Say Hey, you and you should get the sound.

Most other words in French emphasize the second syllable, such as Paree, ici (which rhymes with Paree).

English intonation
Emphasize the first syllable.













Japanese
Monotone with every syllable the same, staccato.



Chinese
Every syllable has equal emphasis. Listen to a Chinese speaker speaking Singlish (mixed English and Malay and Mandarin and local Hokkien dialect words. they say welcome as well cum. A native English speaker would say WELLcm or whelk-um.

I have joined a Polyglot group on Facebook. I wrote:

 The Chinese sentence ma ma etc with the tones indicated is a way of remembering tones in general. I remember that the one for scold sounds angry and low. I haven't yet got it but if I make the effort or had to teach it I would remember it. Make up a sentence in which the word has to be said in that tone because of the sense.

Chineasy and other YouTube videos clearly have native Chinese speakers saying the words. 

Other useful advice:

Listen to the language being spoken to become accustomed to the sounds. Listen to the radio as background sound, play recordings of the news, watch films with subtitles. Repeat what is said in the same tone even if you don't understand what is being said. Start with common phrases. 

Use Memrise and Duolingo. Look up placenames in Wikipedia and play back the sounds. 

If languages are too challenging, try Esperanto, a made up language, which looks like Spanish but has  The Chinese sentence ma ma etc with the tones indicated is a way of remembering tones in general. I remember that the one for scold sounds angry and low. I haven't yet got it but if I make the effort or had to teach it I would remember it. Make up a sentence in which the word has to be said in that tone because of the sense. They simplified everything into only 16 rules, so all plurals are the same.

Please see my other posts on English, Singlish and learning languages. Share links to your favourite posts.


Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, speaker and language teacher and trainer.