Final Week: More Practice and Summary

Week 13: Summary and Report

 ~~~~~~What I have done~~~~~~~~

During the last week of practice, I tried to keep practicing everyday with the archetype with the following steps:

1. I read the selected poem sentence by sentence, then recorded and compared it with the original sentence in the archetype. I used the trasncription to remind myself of the detailed mistakes and inaccurate tones in the performance.

2. Then I made a list of problem I had in the imitation:

 Consonant

 

n→l 奶奶→lailai、牛奶→liulai、

姑娘→guliang、那多→la多、美女→meilv
r→l 热→le、突然→toulan

Vowels

u→ou，肚子→douzi、绿豆→loudou
e→uo，帅哥→suaiguo、合作→huozuo、一个→yiguo
ui→ei，对头→deidou、退步→teibu、嘴巴→zeiba、璀璨→ceican、随便→seibian
ue→iuo，确实→qiuosi、学习→xiuoxi, (just for q、x)

Exceptions

u：

祝贺→zouhuo
初中→couzong
数学→souxiuo

 

3. As I got more familiar with the pronunciation, I got back to my comfort zone and read after the archetype to correct some detailed vowel and consonant production.

 

4. Every other day, I used the words with target vowel or consonants to communicate with students from Wuhan and kept a list of non-autentic pronunciation in my dialogue:

Overnaslaization of some vowels: e.g  Kang/qiao/zai/wo, If the vowel cluster is the "front, high" vowel, then we don't nasalize it very often

Tones in the speech: The tone system in Wuhan Dialect is different from that in Mandarin Chinese. One of the students from Wuhan sent me an article about the tonal changes, then I referred to the following information for practice.

 

 

5. Here are the online resource I used for practice and imitation:

Poem with Wuhan Dialect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3eRoGSkTdc 

Wuhan Wiki: http://wuhanlen.com/wiki/index.php/%E6%AD%A6%E6%B1%89%E8%AF%9D%E7%9A%84%E9%9F%B3%E6%A0%87%E7%B3%BB%E7%BB%9F  

~~~~~~~~My Final Recording~~~~~~~

1.Link to your final recording for the semester:Final Recording

2. A comparison of your final recording with previous recordings and a description of the areas where you have and haven't progressed:

 Compared with the previous trials, I think I have been more familiar with the unique vowel and consonants in Wuhan Dialect. When produceing the sounds, I am more confident and "automatized" with the differences. And I also referred to the checklist less frequently than before. However, I do find it difficult to catch the tonal changes since the system in Wuhan dialect is not in one-to-one correspondence with that in Mandarin Chinese.

e..g 

My First tone in Wuhan dialect is ok, since both are flat in the two dialects. But the 2nd tone is like the 3rd tone in Mandarin, with the 3rd tone like the deeper 4th tone in Mandarin. I had to mememorize the Chinese characters and their corresponding tones in both dialects to complete the changes, which is not natural production then.

3. Final Thoughts:

I still need to work on the tones by practicing and referring to more reliable authentic samples, instead of the written analysis and limited input.I think I did a right thing to start from transcripts, which helped me a lot with segmental production. I am also satisfied with the sequencing of vowel/consonant/C+V clusters/single tone/suprasegmentals/general practice, which is easy for me to follow and check my progress.

Once given more chance, I really want to get more authentic materials for automaticity and natural production. I might also choose a monologue as archetype, which is more communicative that a poem.

• final thoughts, including a description of what you still need to learn or refine, and thoughts about what you did right and what you think you should have done differently

Week Nine: Supral Segmental Practice and Wholistics Practice

This week, I tried to practice with the transcribed scripts twice a day and recorded my performance every time. Then I compared my pronunciation with the archetype and took notes on the differences and inaccurate sections in my audio files. As I kept giving corrective feedback to myself and kept track of the progress, I found the following problems in my practice:

1. Nasalized vowels:
    As I tried to practice reading the poem sample, one section that requires more practice is the nasalized vowels in the archetype. When I listened to my sample and the archetype, I found that I have "over-nasalized" many vowels which actually does not need nasalization, since they are not in nasal vowel cluster.

[To make it easy to exemplify, I hereby use Pinyin instead of IPA to compare the differences]

e.g
a.  kang qiao (I nasalized the diphthong in the second character which is not nasal in the archetype; however, for the first one, I did not nasalize it sufficiently )
b. le (in this particle "了"， I should have first changed the approximant into alveolar nasal /n/ and then nasalize it, but when I paid more attention to the change of vowel "schwa" to /au/, I forgot to nasalize it properly.)


2. Approximants and nasal stops in syllable initial position:
e.g. As I explained in the previous section, /l/ and /n/ are "mixed" used and the Wuhan dialect even uses a nasalized later approximants to replace the counterparts of /n/ and /l/ in Mandarin Chinese. The systematic changes are not easy to automatized for me, so I did more practice on this section:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5h1i7ux5j55pjhx/Practice%20Week%20Nine.wma

3. General tones:
I still cannot grasp the "whole" tonal system of Wuhan dialect now, which made me a little bit worried. I asked my archetype provider for help, she recommended that I should listen to more authentic examples, instead of just memorize the tones for each character. So I began to listen to her daily speech and imitate some online examples to achieve "tonal" automativity.

My practice sample based on the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sehGj07YLQM 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tfbyldvainbvgnc/initation%20of%20dialectual%20movie.wma 

Having practiced with the native speaker and the online video, I got less dependent on the scripts and notes for tonal changes. In the last week, I planned to practice with more authentic examples in addition to the normal archetype practice. I will also record and compare my progress in the past two weeks to sum up my project.
 

Week Seven & Eight: More Research and Practice on Vowels and Consonants

I kept this posts updated because I noticed that the vowels in Wuhan dialect changes with the consonants in front of it. Here I will list some useful links and simple description of how it helped me to learn the vowels better.

1. Here is a Wuhaner discuss his/her own discovery about the phonological features (esp the vowels in Wuhan dialect).
  http://bbs.club.sohu.com/read_elite.php?b=wuhan&a=1658915
In this forum, the author introduce the merge of vowels in Wuhan dialect:
e.g. 六 (lju)，绿(ly)，炉(lu)，楼(lou) in Wuhan dialect shared the same vowel sound:/ou/ and even the same tone! I tried to find some similar merging groups to make my practice accurate and rule-based. Furthermore, the author also mentioned the nasalized sound merge in some utterance. e.g. some particles ending after a nasalized syllble will be omitted and left with a nasal "stop".

2. Wuhanese Learning Journal:http://q.sohu.com/q/23152/t/56055367
Interestingly, someone in China is also working on Wuhan dialect and keeping a journal entry for it, Here is her "Quik intro" to the rules I introduced in the previous posts. (I mark the )

1. No palatal affricates
2. No "back" nasals
3. Changes for consonats https://www.dropbox.com/s/ea8lqmnnbthqxkn/vowels%20clusters%201.wma

•  n→l     奶奶→lailai、牛奶→liulai、姑娘→guliang、那多→la多、美女→meilv
•  r→l     热→le、突然→toulan

4. Changes for vowels:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1p0knv32dvk44f7/vowels%20clusters%202.wma 

•  u→ou，肚子→douzi、绿豆→loudou、马路→malou、兔子→touzi、阻力→zouli、促进→coujin、速度→soudu
• e→uo，帅哥→suaiguo、合作→huozuo、一个→yiguo
•  ui→ei，对头→deidou、退步→teibu、嘴巴→zeiba、璀璨→ceican、随便→seibian

       ue→iuo，确实→qiuosi、学习→xiuoxi, (just for q、x)
5、Vowels lead to consonant changes:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkm9ut35ljz8xq4/vowels%20clusters%203.wma 

• u：

      zhu→ju， 猪头→居头；但是 祝贺→zouhuo
      chu→qu 处理→曲理；但是 初中→couzong
      shu→xu，书包→需包；但是 数学→souxiuo。
      ru→yu， 如 如果→于果

• un：

      zhun→jun，如 准备→junbei
      chun→qun，如 三五醇→sanwuqun
      shun→xun，如 顺利→xunli
      run→yun，如 滋润→ziyun

6. Set pairs:uan→an， 集团→jitan、锻炼→danlian

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vg89lscrdy92mho/vowels%20clusters%204.wma 7. Special Ones:
  去，发音为ke
  巷，发音为hang
  六，发音为lou

Here is my demo:
In the upcoming week (week 8-9) for my practice, I will try to apply these rules and gradually achieve a new "comfortzone" for my practice.

In addition to the speaking practice, I also try to do some "listening comprehension" questions on the Wuhan dialect to enhance my perception of the target language.

Week Seven: Practice and more research on tones

Based on previous practice on the single Chinese characters, I now started to pay more attention to the suprasegmental features on the tonal changes in Wuhan dialect in the archetype. In order to keep track of the tonal changes, I use Pinyin transcription with tones to mark the features. Here is a sample used in my transcription.

I also found a chart with "transition" from Pinyin to IPA for further reference:
http://talkbank.org/pinyin/Trad_chart_IPA.php

In this week's practice, I did several similar demos to compare with the archetype. I noticed that when producing the 3rd tone, the original sound tend to be more flat and the duratio is longer. Then I changed my own speech a little bit to imitate the 3rd tone. As for the whole archetype, even it also share four tones, the general flunctuation is not as obvious as those tones in Mandarin Chinese. In addtion, the general flow of the speech is a little "blurred". I asked my friend who provided the archetype. She told me that the blurred speech is actually an outstanding feature of Wuhan dialect.

Here attached is the Pinyin Transcription and my practice Demo:

In next week, I decide to go back to the whole poem and begin my general practice without transcription's help.







Here is my attempt according to the Pinyin script: