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 dtm987654123 on Monday February 02, 2026 @11:18AM (#46857763)

>Things like tone and grammar are the very basics that you learn right at the beginning.‡ Beginners complain about them, but after a few months of studying Chinese, you should be fairly comfortable with the tones.

Disagree slightly with this- pronouncing the tones individually and getting to the point where you can be understood isn't too hard (well still hard), but combining them when speaking more quickly is more challenging, especially if you want it to flow nicely, and adding emphasis while maintaining the tones. Not that it's mandatory if you just want to understand/be understood, it depends on one's goals.

It's a common misconception that it's enough just to learn the tones and move on and it's very hard to find teachers who are able to help with more advanced pronunciation

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin t... by DiogenesKynikos on Monday February 02, 2026 @09:08PM (#46865456)

I fully agree that a lot of the difficulty with the tones is in pronouncing them at pace, and in internalizing how they interact with one another.

However, this is still something that happens very early on when learning Chinese, and it takes nowhere near the same amount of invested time as learning thousands of vocabulary terms.

[ Parent | on HN ]