@SergeyFM You will lose all respect of him, if you find out some of the very distasteful things he's said and done. I recommend you have a look around.

"@Michillini So you are saying that previously, before you started deliberate pronounciation practice, you could correctly identify every single tone, but were just unable to produce the tones? Eg. You hear a word X, and could say, "Yes, that's the second tone.""

> In isolation and in tone pairs and when spoken slowly, yes I could hear them clearly. During natural speed Chinese? Often not but that mattered far less.

"Japanese speakers had issues with their pronunciation of 'l' and 'r' because they could not correctly identify the difference from a listening perspective."

Yes I imagine if they literally can't distinguish between the sounds when spoken deliberately and clearly then that would pose a barrier to being able to produce them.

"To me it all comes down to opportunity cost, it's not that pronunciation isn't important, the question is, are there more fun or more worthwhile activities that I could pursue instead of drilling tones."

I think the question is: Do you want to learn to speak Chinese? If the answer is 'yes' then you need to learn tones because they're an essential component of pronunciation. But 'no' is also a perfectly valid answer.

"...and grammatical accuracy, and only redress phonetic imperfections after having reached a quite advanced level."

Again, speaking atonal Chinese does not fall into the category of "phonetic imperfections".

"Also @Mischa sorry for calling you a perfectionist, hope this gives some closure. Have good day."

Yeah, no worries. I mean, to be fair I've worked on pronunciation and tones more than most people would probably be willing to do and more than is strictly necessary for the purposes of just speaking clearly. And I'm pretty good but there is like definately this tier above me which is the learners who are what I would call "genuine perfectionists."

And I don't say that in a disparaging way; these are people who have developed an astonishing level of sophistication with phonetics, dedicating serious amounts of time to nailing native pronunciation and can do really incredible things. And not out of vanity either, just because they really love practicing phonetics. It's admirable.

@Bamboozled: This was a very balanced answer. I 100% agree with your views and follow a similar approach.

"I'm already 3 hours behind my schedule this month". Come on, you put everyone to shame. Whenever I check the performance of my "buddy list", you are always at the top. Do you ever take a cheat day and do nothing? :))

@bamboozled I was thinking along the same lines. Sure, delaying speaking for many years may have positive aspects on your pronunciation (that's the theory), but at what cost? Even if it were true, why are you placing perfect prounciation at pretty much the top of your list of priorities? If people are doing this they are prioritising it above enjoying conversations, meeting people in that culture, making new friends, travelling to that country/region, etc. I mean, everyone has their own goals, which can be very different from each other, and that is completely fine. I just question if the people with the goal of perfect pronunciation, who made this decision at the very start of their language learning journey, know what they are sacrificing for it.

Secondly comes the question of the efficiency of this method. Assuming the theory is correct, how efficient is it compared to speaking earlier and doing deliberate prounciation practice to make up for it?

Personally, I find drilling tones to be incredibly boring and demotivating.

Yeah, it's a fair point and to be honest I felt the same way at the start. I think like anything it gets better when you start to see real progress from making a consistent effort, which can happen quite quickly (within weeks) with tones. That can motivate you to want to do more.

It's tough to strike the right balance because getting good at tones does involve repetetive activities not everyone considers 'fun.' But I guess that still only leaves two choices: delay the drills til later or do them from the start.

I wouldn't say I regret delaying working on tones necessarily, in the sense that doing so enabled me to create a blueprint to help the majority of Mandarin learners who reach intermediate to advanced stages of Chinese with bad tones rectify them: http://imlearningmandarin.com/2022/02/12/its-never-too-late-to-learn-chinese-tones-heres-how/

But in terms of my progress? Yes I think doing them from the start would have helped immensely, both in terms of my listening progress and reading. I read several novels without a strong foundation in phonetics, leading me to subvocalise millions of words incorrectly. Doing tone work certainly helps with listening comprehension too.

"My guess is lack of intensive listening every day done by you was a downfall for you mastering the tones."

I don't want to sound immodest here but I think it's plainly kind of ludicrous to refer to my "downfall" mastering the tones, in the context of that second clip.

If I'd listened for 6-8 hours a day alongside the drills I did? Maybe I'd sound a little more native than I do. But that was never my goal so I don't understand the point.

I've seen this before. To be honest as a Chinese learner who struggled with tones in the past, I didn't find Steve's practical advice on how to learn them very helpful.

Steve's tones in Mandarin are pretty good and he does a good job of making it seem less daunting. But on the specifics, his memory seems hazy.

The idea that you just get gradually better without first putting in a lot of preparatory legwork - through tasks which are boring and repetitive - is appealing but misleading, in my opinion. I understand that Steve is keen not to put new learners off and make tones appear daunting. But the fact is you don't get to sound like he does in Mandarin - or like I do - without a significant amount of work.

Steve mentioned that he listened a lot to comic dialogues and picked up the intonation that way. Sounds like a good idea. But that on its own and before first building a solid foundation by memorising tones for known vocab, drilling tones in isolation and tone pairs before moving on to whole setences won't get you very far. If you just try to mimic without first building a strong foundation you won't mimic very well. The specific tasks involved here matter, and their is a paucity of information out there for new learners who want know what they should do specifically to build a good foundation.

Steve has mentioned in the past that he made a serious attempt to memorise each tone for each vocabulary item when he learned Mandarin. But he sort of mentions it as a footnote, and dismisses it as unimportant in comparison with listening exercises (which I agree are also crucial). He also once mentioned that he didn't memorise all the tones for all his vocab in Cantonese. This may explain why his Cantonese tones are nowhere near the level of his Mandairn.