發音¶

Jesuit missionaries introduced the Rosary prayers to China in the late sixteenth century. Michele Ruggieri arrived in 1579 and Matteo Ricci in 1582. Chinese Catholics soon recited them in characters according to local dialects -- Cantonese (廣東話) in Guangdong and Hong Kong, Hokkien (閩南語) in Fujian and Taiwan, and northern Mandarin dialects in Beijing.

Chinese has traditionally been written with logographic characters, and pronunciation has always varied by dialect. Comprehensive dictionaries list more than 50,000 characters. The 1716 Kangxi Dictionary cataloged 47,035 entries. Functional literacy in classical texts requires several thousand characters. The civil service examinations, instituted in 605 and abolished in 1905, required candidates to memorize the Four Books and Five Classics (roughly 400,000 characters total) and to compose original eight-legged essays, with provincial pass rates often below 5 percent.

After the Republic of China was founded in 1912, the Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation established a national standard based on the Beijing dialect. It was formalized by 1932 and is known as 國語 in Taiwan and 普通話 on the mainland, or Mandarin Chinese more colloquially.

This page presents the standard Mandarin pronunciation for the Rosary.

Phonemes (音位)¶

Mandarin syllables are formed from 21 initials, 3 medials, and 13 base finals -- 37 phonetic components -- plus a tone.

Tones (聲調)¶

It is commonly taught that there are four tones plus a neutral tone. These are usually demonstrated with the syllable "ma": 媽, 麻, 馬, 罵, 嗎 -- see if you can hear the difference (play all). Standard teaching often stops at these five tones and presents them as complete. To better understand these five tones, the traditional isolated forms are helpful.

These are the tones taught in isolation. Now consider actual spoken Mandarin. The Praat diagram below shows contours from a native speaker saying a natural phrase. Click the image to listen, and look carefully at the actual tones.

There is a lot going on here that does not match the five tones. And it’s a native Mandarin speaker. When you ask native speakers what’s going on, they’ll respond as confused as if you asked a native English speaker why they have so many vowel sounds. In reality, there are 5 tones in Mandarin just like there are 5 vowels in English. The five-tone model cannot explain it, and real spoken Mandarin is far more complex.

If you only learn 5 tones, you not only won’t understand native speakers, you won’t be understood when you speak.

Language teachers often tell learners they will master tones through exposure and practice -- a natural discovery process. This should cause us to cringe. The point of language teaching is the opposite:

Typical tone instruction does not short-circuit the slow process of natural discovery. Any educator or resource that promotes natural discovery is fundamentally failing. It is a polite way of admitting, "I do not know how to teach this -- figure it out yourself."

Tones in actual spoken Mandarin are far more complex than standard resources admit. Tone Sandhi and Tone Pairs are far more efficacious towards proper Mandarin pronunciation, directly complimenting the patterns you'll find in the rosary prayers.

Tone Sandhi (聲調變化)¶

Tone change rules, or tone sandhi, govern how tones interact in actual spoken Mandarin. Tone sandhi rules are the first clear indication that tones in context are far more complex than the "five tone" textbook model.

These adjustments appear throughout the Rosary. The rules are not exhaustive and vary somewhat by speaker.

Tone Pairs (聲調組合)¶

Tone pairs refer to the tonal contours produced when two syllables are spoken together in a disyllabic word or compound. Most Mandarin vocabulary consists of two-syllable words, so tones rarely occur in isolation in real speech. Practicing isolated tones (the classic "ma" chart) is a starting point, but it is insufficient for natural pronunciation and listening. Tone pairs train the ear and articulators for relative pitch movement, coarticulation, and the actual flow between syllables.

There are 20 standard tone pairs: the first syllable uses one of the four main tones, and the second uses one of the four main tones or the neutral tone (0). Some counts treat it as 19 audible patterns because the 3+3 sandhi rule produces a 2+3 contour (as shown above). Neutral tone only appears in second position.

Learning tone pairs is a helpful way to identify new words as they’ll most often fit one of the 20 tone pairs. John Pasden at sinosplice.com (who also wrote about using Praat to visualize tones) put together freely available Tone Pair Drills with audio examples of each of the tone pairs. I loaded John’s tone pair drills into a flashcard app:

Practice Tone Pairs

Most important, daily rosary will do wonders in training the ear and tongue for recognizing tone pairs. Try to identify the tone pairs in the different passages.

推薦¶

Pleco app and learnchineseez.com; excellent online dictionaries, as well as mdbg.net and zdic.net; excellent for looking up characters with audio, pinyin, and zhuyin.

Sinosplice.com; clear explanations and drills especially helpful for tones.

Happy Chinese (and similar shows); CCTV series with clear pronunciation and subtitles.

Chinese flashcards; hand-made are usually best, but listening to audio associated with each card is extremely helpful.

Hello / 你好 Tones / 聲調 Learning / 學習 Conversation / 對話 Danger Zone / 危險區

不推薦¶

While the original Michel Thomas was great for Spanish, the Chinese course was slow pace and painfully inaccurate for tone guidance. Similar experience with Pimsleur, and almost all of the advertised learning apps (ChineseSkill, ChinesePod, etc) were an unfortunately waste of time.