The first word in the glossary list doesn't have the right character. =)

nice lesson. there's a garden path sentence in the introduction that caught me for a moment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence

that's a funny story, mikey2tan. Glad things worked out.

cassattila - I like to listen to music. even if you don't understand the lyrics at first, they eventually start making sense and it gets you speaking faster than just tones.

There are some songs in the KTV Wednesday section here that are pretty good. i really like Wang Fei (more Wang Fei!!!), and you can find her music on Youtube pretty easily. This is my favorite:

Wo3 yuan2 yi4 wei4 ni3 = "I am willing to (exist?) for you"

cassattila - John Pasden has a Mandarin Chinese Tone Pair Drills package on his website which you can download. It's more to get you practising the pronouncing of tones, but you could grab all the mp3s and make a playlist for listening practice too.

@cassattila - there's some hip-hop here in Beijing, but I've never run into Chinese reggae. Let us know if you run into any.

chinese reggae you can listen here:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=2MHpcJoEv-g

tomas

one way i have found to help learn tones is to find word situations in my native language (american english) and use them to understand the tone contour for pronouncing chinese...

like hmmm goes down and up just like third tone, or well? goes from low to high like second, etc...

also you can try to find phrases in your own language that would give a good representation of tone combinations, like "well I never!" well4 I1 ne4 ver4

then you can use this natural tonal concept and simply import the chinese phonetics into what is already a natural tonal situation and it flows much easier...for me at least...maybe others will find the idea helpfull...

@echo

"well i never" may not be said by young people much anymore, but it is a very well known set phrase in english, and while english may not have explicit tonal associations with word meanings, all english words get pronounced with intonation just as in chinese,

its simply that english intonation is flexible and can be applied to any word... english intonation has less to do with defining word meaning as providing contextual association,

that said, a word like never, if listened to carefully, generally gets pronounced with two downward high to low intonational stresses, perhaps not 100% the exact same as a chinese person, but a very effective analogy for people who are beginning to understand what may seem like a very foreign concept until they realize they do the (basicaly) same thing themselves all the time, they just don't pay attention to it-

lastly, as i said, its just something i found works well for me so i offer it to those who also may find it helps them...

谢谢 =）

I am a native American English speaker. This might help you other native English speakers.

I got this tip from my Chinese teacher that has helped me a lot:

As you native English speakers already know.... in spoken English certain expressions are spoken in certain tones. For example: when we say "of course" the word "course" is spoken in 4th tone. So whenever I would say "of course" in Chinese (dang1ran2) I would always say "dang1ran4" instead of "dang1ran2".

One thing that helped me break that habit is this little exercise: say every syllable in an English sentence like "Of course I would love to go with you" in second tone. It helps make you aware of tones we native English speakers subconsciously have learned to use in English.