Chinese pronunciations are hard. So here I’ve broken down five of the most difficult Chinese pronunciations for you:
- Chinese Pronunciation – How to pronounce the “qu” sound
- Chinese Pronunciation – How to pronounce the “re” sound
- Chinese Pronunciation – How to pronounce the “rui” sound
- Chinese Pronunciation – How to pronounce the “xue” sound
- Chinese Pronunciation – How to pronounce the “cong” sound
But wait, you still need a Chinese teacher
These videos may help you with your Chinese pronunciation but it cannot replace the need of a good Chinese teacher. Often times you may not be able to hear the difference between the correct and wrong pronunciations. The older you get, the more likely this is the case. I think the best age to learn a new language is before 16 years old.
Once you have passed that age, it’s important for you to get some honest feedback about your pronunciation from your native Chinese teacher / friend. It’s best to correct your pronunciations since the beginning because once you have learned to pronounce it wrong, it can be very hard to correct it.
Practise Chinese pronunciation slowly
I find practising pronunciation is like learning a piece of music on a musical instrument. You need to slow down to the point of making it right before you can speed up. On the contrary, if you just want to quickly learn the piece and rush through it and you don’t slow down to correct your mistakes, your music will sound crap. Slow practise and correcting those little mistakes is boring and painful but it’s actually the most efficient way to practise and it will give you the best result.
I think getting your pronunciation as perfect as possible at the beginning of your learning should be your number one priority. Once again, this is just like learning a new musical instrument. You can either start by learning your favourite pieces and end up playing badly or you can start by building your techniques until you are technically capable to handle it and make it sound great. Of course, you need to strive a balance and make sure you don’t burn yourself out during the learning process.
What happened to Chinese Talkeze and Journey to Chinese Fluency Podcast?
I produced these videos a few years ago and these were supposed to be sent out as a email series but things happened in my life and I’ve decided to put an end to this venture of teaching Chinese online. In fact, I’ve produced hours of videos that are still stored on my hard drive. Sadly, I’ve ended my audio hosting and the Journey to Chinese Fluency podcast had come to an end. Surprisingly, I’m still seeing a constant stream of visitors to my website each month and I feel bad for not providing valuable content to my website visitors. So here I am, updating my website again just to make your time worth it. See how this goes. Maybe I will upload all those tutorial videos in the future. Just maybe.