Should I Worry About My Accent When Speaking Chinese?

No one can speak Chinese without an accent on the first day

Have you ever found any words hard to pronounce in your own language or had moments of saying the wrong thing when speaking your native language?

Probably yes.

And have you met or seen anyone who learned your mother language as their second language and has no accent? And you absolutely cannot tell that they are not a native speaker?

My guess is it's very rare.

So if you just started learning Chinese and find yourself having trouble with some pronunciation. It is perfectly normal and acceptable.

 

Is it possible to have perfect Chinese Pronunciation?

There are people who learned Chinese as a second language and have no accent.

The best example is Canadian comedian/host Mark Henry Rowswell, known as 大山 Dàshān by Chinese people.

大山Dàshān lived, studied and worked in China for many years. He was professionally trained by a cross-talk 相声 xiàngsheng master.

Professional cross-talk trainees memorize and practice crazy tongue twisters that are difficult even for native Chinese speakers. Some of these tongue twisters have hundreds of words and are a few minutes long.

So if someone works on Chinese pronunciation hard enough, they might be able to speak Chinese without an accent.

But should you worry if you don't have perfect Chinese pronunciation? Of course not.

With that said, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to practice and improve Chinese pronunciation.

 

There is always a chance to improve Chinese pronunciation even more

No one starts to learn Chinese for 10 days and all of a sudden has perfect Chinese pronunciation. It is just unrealistic.

It takes years of observance and practice - to sound ALMOST, not even 100%, native.

A lot of beginners might have trouble with some Pinyin Initials/Finals or Pinyin Tones, but when they work on Chinese pronunciation with the right techniques, they can see surprising improvement.

There is really no shortcut to improve Chinese pronunciation. It takes hard work and the right ways of practicing.

 

Benefits to improve Chinese pronunciation

When you talk to a native speaker, the first thing they notice is your pronunciation. And then other language skills like your choice of words or grammatical usage.

Apart from just leaving a good impression on people, there are a lot of other benefits to improve Chinese pronunciation.

Better pronunciation means better communication

You can speak in a more relaxed manner and speak faster.

People understand you easier.

And because you know the minor differences between similar sounds, your listening skills will improve as well.

Better pronunciation builds confidence and motivation

Even though it is difficult to reach native-level pronunciation, improvement at early stage is relatively easy to achieve.

If you practice Chinese pronunciation with the right techniques, you can see immediately improvement.

This helps build up confidence and give motivation to keep on learning the language.

 

How to practice Chinese Pronunciation

When you work on Chinese pronunciation, you need to work on both Pinyin and Tones.

A typical Chinese Pinyin Syllable has three parts: an Initial, a Final and a Tone, with some exceptions that have no Initial.

How to practice Chinese Pinyin Pronunciation

There are 21 Initials and 36 Finals in the Chinese Pinyin Alphabet.

First, try to get each Initial and Final right. You can achieve this by learning them group by group. For example, start with b p m f for Initials and a o e i u ü for Finals.

Then start to practice longer language unit such as two-syllable words, multi-syllable phrases and then sentences paragraphs and more.