By the numbers...

[khiemtran]

I always find with Mandarin that the tones are the first part of a word I'll forget. This is probably a symptom of learning mostly from books instead of verbally, but it usually has the annoying consequence that I might remember each syllable I need for a sentence but not the tones to use for them.

The new system I've been working on is to use the tone numbers to form mnemonics. For example, to remember linyu (2nd tone then 4th tone), meaning "shower", I'd remember the phrase "The shower is open 24 hours a day". And as for the attendant (fu2wu4yuan2)? Well, he then has to work twenty-four hours a day too (242).

Comments

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Cute.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Seems to be working okay so far, although it fell down at tui(1)jian(4), "recommend". The mnemonic was "can you recommend 1 4 me?" but for some reason it turned into "what do you recommend 4 1?"

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

And did that change the meaning into anything interesting, or was it just nonsense? (How good are Mandarin speakers at figuring out what you meant when you use the wrong tones?)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

They are actually a lot better than is generally made out. It's a bit like the gendarme in "Allo? Allo?". When he explains what a "pope" is by saying "wetter rins down a pope", you still understand him. Also, when spoken at speed a lot of tones will just flatten out. If the context is clear, you can get away with a lot. On the other hand, if you come up with a short sentence out of the blue and get the tones wrong, it can be unintelligible.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Thats interesting. I'm still searching for a reliable way to remember the gender of nouns in Welsh. In French I could do it by remembering whether it was le something or la something, but the word for "the" doesn't change in Welsh and there is no indefinite article.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. How's your spacial memory? If you imagine two (three?) rooms, each filled with objects of a single gender, can you remember which room had which items?

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I haven't tried anything like that. My spatial memory is good in real life. I don't know whether it would work so well with imaginary pictures.

What I really need to do is remember a short phrase rather than the noun. Feminine singular nouns cause a soft mutation, eg "cath fach" (small cat), "sospan fach" (small saucepan) but "ci bach" (small dog) and "ty bach" (small house (also toilet!)). So that makes cats and saucepans feminine while dogs and houses are masculine. The problem is, I haven't yet been able to make myself sit down and work out which is which and make lists of small things to learn.

Until recently I fondly hoped that I'd somehow absorb it intuitively, but it's not happening.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes it a bit easier then. They used the same trick in my Spanish course, since Spanish adjectives are more obviously masculine or feminine than the nouns.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way. There are just two genders in Welsh. Apparently there did used to be three at one time, but the neuter gender disappeared hundreds of years ago and the neuter nouns were reassigned to M or F. Unfortunately, this means that a few things are M in the north and F in the south or vice versa (heaven knows what happens in Mid Wales!)

Or so a Welsh tutor once told me.