Tone Bootcamp Part 2: Tone Pairs
When most foreigners speak, they consciously think about the tone of each syllable and try (very obviously) to fully articulate the tone. This is the wrong approach.
Tones do not exist in isolation - they exist within an overall flow of the phrase.
To help you expand your ability to perceive and mimic tonal "chunks", we will practice mimicking all the possible TonePairs. Tone pairs are important, because most Mandarin words are made up of two syllables, so Mandarin "chunking" most often happens in groups of 2.To demonstrate this, I recorded myself saying the phrase - 我们一起吃饭 (We eat together) - three times in the recording below.
- The first time I say the phrase naturally with no breaks
- The second time I insert breaks between the natural rhythmic tone pair chunks of the phrase
- The first time I insert breaks between each syllable
Notice how when I break the phrase into rhythmic chunks, it still sounds natural. This may be the way a Mandarin speaker would say the phrase if he were distracted by something and took some time to get his ideas out.
But when I divide syllable by syllable it messes up the entire tonal flow. On the next pages, spend some time listening to the tone pairs and mimicking.