Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin tones

Re:Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin t... by cyberax on Friday January 30, 2026 @09:34PM (#46832780)

I'm a native Russian speaker, and I decided to learn Mandarin, because it's linguistically almost the opposite of Russian.

I had no problems with tone pronunciation, but tone recognition was indeed much trickier. I still often get lost when listening to fast speech although I can follow formal speech (news) usually without problems.

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Re:Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin t... by barrell on Saturday January 31, 2026 @01:00AM (#46833899)

I recently started learning a tonal language, and so far have not struggled too much wrt tones when everything is slow. There was an original strangeness and refusal for my vocal cords to want to work that way, but probably only for the first month or so.

At least, this is the case for slow text. Once the text is sped up it’s amazing how my brain just stops processing that information. Both listening and speaking.

I’m sure this will come with practice and time but for now I find it fascinating

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Re:Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin t... by thenthenthen on Saturday January 31, 2026 @03:38AM (#46834686)

Euro speaker here, no problem with recognising tones but speaking them…:/

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Re:Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin t... by cyberax on Sunday February 01, 2026 @05:26PM (#46850027)

Are you studying a language with contour tones or with high/mid tone distinction? I tried to study a bit of Thai, and the high/mid tone distinction was a complete show-stopper for me.

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