THIS is Why You Can’t Hear Tones in Fast Chinese Speech

Hello! 大家好! I'm Grace. If you have been wondering why you can't hear Chinese tones in real-life speech, you need to take a look at this. This is the actual pitch contour of someone saying which means very happy. The 常 is with the second tone, which means it should rise, but instead it falls here. This can happen in natural Chinese speech. So sometimes the problem isn't that you can't hear Chinese tones, it's that they don't sound the way you learned them. So today let's talk about what exactly happens to tones in naturally spoken Chinese. First of all, you need to know it's basically impossible to speak with perfect complete tones in every word in daily conversations. Because if that's the case, this might happen. So to communicate more efficiently, in natural spoken Chinese, we pronounce certain parts of a word or sentence more lightly, which helps speech flow more quickly and naturally. And when a syllable is in one of these weaker parts, it tends to be shorter and less fully pronounced, so its tone can get reduced too. So the first thing you need to know about tones in natural speech is And what are those weak syllables? We will talk about it soon, but let's first take a look at some examples. Pay attention to how she says But here, because it's in a weak syllable, it's heavily reduced. So instead of falling, its pitch actually rises under the influence of the surrounding tones. Let's listen again. Here are some other examples of reduced tones. Let's take a look at the reduced This isn't reduced as much as the in the last clip, so the pitch reaches a high point. But there isn't enough time for it to fall before the speaker moves on to the next syllable, so it sounds like a short high tone. 果 has a third tone, so its pitch should be low. But here, it's in a weak syllable position, and the previous syllable ends high, so there isn't enough time for the pitch to drop all the way down before moving on to the next syllable. That's why 果 ends up sounding relatively high here. So you might have noticed that when a tone gets reduced, it can be more influenced by the tones around it. You can think of it this way, each tone has its own pitch goal to achieve. But when a syllable is reduced, it may not fully reach that goal. It can lose some of its usual shape and be influenced more by the tones around it. Now let's take a look at where syllables tend to be weaker in a sentence. When we speak, not every word in a sentence is equally important. Some words carry the main message, while others play a smaller role. And those less important parts are often where syllables become weaker or more reduced. For example, Aside from neutral tone syllables, you can hear that some words in this sentence are said more strongly, while others are said more lightly. So here you can see that when we speak, we naturally give more emphasis to the parts that matter most. In this case, she puts more emphasis on which makes the main message pretty easy to catch. Words like on the other hand are more about connecting ideas or adding extra information rather than carrying the main message. So unless we want to emphasize them specifically, they tend to be weaker and their tones would usually be more reduced. So here is a useful rule to keep in mind. Words that carry important information tend to stand out more, so their tones are usually pronounced more fully. Words that carry less importance tend to be weaker, so their tones are more likely to be reduced. This is especially common with words that mainly help with grammar or connect ideas in a sentence. Words like these mainly help connect ideas or structure the sentence rather than carry the main message, so they're often weaker and their tones might be reduced. Let's now take a look at another example. Here you can see that the tone of is very short. It doesn't fall very much. And is pronounced more lightly. So its rising tone doesn't rise very much either. Both of them are the second syllable of a two-syllable word. So even within the same word, not all syllables are equally strong. In fact, in connected speech, two-syllable words often show a strong we pattern, with the second syllable more likely to have a reduced tone. Let's see more examples. And it's not just the tone that can get reduced. When the second syllable is weak, its consonant can sometimes be reduced or even disappear too. I talked about this in lesson 6 of my Chinese tone course. In that lesson, you can learn more about how sounds get reduced or change in fast speech. If you're already taking the course, don't forget to check out lesson 6. And if you haven't joined yet, I've put the course link in the description if you want to take a look. Lastly, there's one more important factor that can affect tone reduction. The more often a word or phrase is used, the more familiar it becomes to both speakers and listeners. So even if it's not pronounced very clearly, people can still understand it pretty easily. That's also why its tones are more likely to get reduced. Now let's take a look at some common words and expressions in real-life speech. 这个就好像我现在走过去给张老师一巴掌 现在 我现在走过去给 我太喜欢语气姐 因为她长得太漂亮了 因为 因为她长得太漂亮了 我本来也没有打算要 没有 我本来也没有打算要 你是不是被你阿姐洗脑了 是不是 你是不是被你阿姐洗脑了 From these examples, you can see that common words and expressions are often pronounced less fully, and their tones can get reduced too. So now you know that in real-life Chinese, it's completely normal for some Chinese tones to sound less clear or less complete. Because native speakers don't pronounce every tone in every word fully and clearly. Some words or syllables tend to be weaker in a sentence, so their tones are more likely to be reduced too. These weaker syllables are usually ones that don't carry the main message, the second syllable of a two-syllable word, or syllables in very common words or expressions. So when you hear Chinese in real life, don't expect every tone to sound exactly like the clear, full version you learned in isolation. This is actually a topic that I've been wanting to cover for a long time, so I'm really glad I finally get to talk about it with you. There's a lot more important concepts about Chinese tones that I teach in my course Grace's Master Guide to Mandarin Tones and Intonation. If you're curious how to make your Chinese tones flow more naturally, or how to use intonation in Chinese to emphasize words and express emotions or attitudes, then you should definitely check out the course. Before we wrap up, I want to address one more question some of you might have. If tones can get reduced in naturally spoken Chinese, are tones still important? And my answer is yes, definitely. Because tones still play an important role in distinguishing meaning. To clearly express yourself in Chinese, you still need to pronounce the important parts of a sentence clearly and realize their tones more fully. If those tones are off, it can affect how natural your Chinese sounds and how easily people can understand you. And if you want to practice Chinese tones, I also have something pretty cool to share with you. A while back, I worked with Immerse to create a mini course for practicing tones through common Chinese phrases. You can actually visualize your pitch while you practice. So if you're often unsure whether you're pronouncing the tones correctly, this kind of visual feedback can be really helpful. If you're interested, you can register and try the first lesson for free. The link is in the description. Alright, that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed finding out the secret behind Chinese tones. Many of you have been telling me that you struggle to hear Chinese tones in fast speech. I hope this video has provided the answer you have been looking for. If there's any other struggle or question you have when learning Chinese, feel free to drop a comment and let me know. 如果你喜歡今天的影片, 別忘記按讚、訂閱和分享喔! You can also find me on Instagram, Grace Mandarin. 那我們下次見囉! Bye bye!