Running on The Rails

Photographs by Chloe

Glacier Ridge Metro Park is a place I love to go for several reasons, not the least of which is the 12 station obstacle course. Some of my favorite stations include rings, tunnel crawl, over-the-wall, over-under, and the cargo net.

I can usually do most of the stations competently. The zig-zag balance beam, which I call The Rails, is the one station that can really frustrate me. Its zig-zag configuration forces quick direction and balance changes as I progress across it, and these don’t always go as smoothly as I would like. Running on The Rails went especially poorly when I first started using the obstacle course.

One day I took my usual running start onto The Rails and immediately fell off. On takes two and three, I zigged when I should’ve zagged as the logs changed direction. I made it a little further each time, but I still fell off before reaching the end. In frustration, I thought about crawling across, seriously considered abandoning any further attempts, then wondered if anyone would notice if I set the whole thing on fire. That’s it! Where’s a lighter? All lighter jokes aside, I suddenly realized The Rails are a physical representation of my attempts to speak Mandarin tones. They require me to change direction and balance as I run just as Mandarin tones do when I speak.

If you read my prior blog piece, The Polish Mandarin, you learned that being able to converse with Joseph and his parents in their native tongue is the catalyst for learning this language. Hopefully, I sufficiently described two of the three reasons Mandarin was initially a challenge for me. This week, it’s about that third reason and the real fun of Mandarin: tones.

In English we use intonation, meaning we assign a higher or lower pitch to a word to lend emphasis to what we’re saying or to convey an attitude. Although we have some predictable intonation patterns, it is usually applied liberally and as the speaker sees the need for emphasis.

Let’s say a friend wakes up in a good mood and greets you with an energetic, “Good morning!” They all but sing the word ‘good’ in a high pitch and then drop to a lower register for the finishing ‘morning’. They might earn a bleary-eyed glare from you for being “that morning person”, but their intonation has successfully conveyed their opinion that the morning is, indeed, good.

Pitch changes in Mandarin speech aren’t about adding emphasis or conveying attitude. It’s about word meaning. Pronouncing a Mandarin word correctly is not enough. You also have to pronounce it while using the correct pitch or tone, that conveys the proper meaning of the word. Get the tone wrong, and even if you’ve pronounced the word correctly you may not have said what you thought you said.

You could mean to say you like pandas but end up complimenting someone’s chest hair, because the Mandarin word “xiong mao” can mean both. You pronounce it the same for both words, but you distinguish which word you mean by saying it with a different tone. “xióng māo” is panda, “xiōng máo” is chest hair. Initially they look exactly the same, but look closer at the markers above the vowels. These tone markers indicate a slight change in the sound ascribed to each syllable of these words.

There are four basic tones and a neutral fifth tone in Mandarin. I wasn’t exactly sure how to approach this tone business until I found Yang Yang Cheng’s YoYo Chinese. Ms.Cheng taught me how to remember the Mandarin tones by tying them to English words and intonation that I already understood.

The first step in learning tones, she assured me, is to find my individual speaking voice range. This is important because everyone has a different range. In the process, I would also learn the first and third tones.

Ms. Cheng starts by posing a hypothetical situation in which a friend asks you to help them move next weekend. You respond with, “Maaaaybe”, dragging out that high, sustained first syllable “Maaaaay” before dropping to the second syllable. That “Maaaay” is the high end of your voice range and that high, sustained sound is also the first tone.

To find the lower end of your voice range, Ms. Cheng has you  imagine someone asking you what you had for lunch three days ago. In the process of staring at the ceiling and recollecting you also verbalize with a low, sustained, “Uuuuuuhhhh”. Your voice may crack in this low register and it feels uncomfortable hanging out here verbally. Welcome to the bottom of your voice register and the third tone.

With the upper and lower ends of your voice range established, it’s now time to learn the second and fourth tones. Ms. Cheng teaches second tone recognition by supposing you are told something outrageous. You respond with an incredulous “What?!”, starting low at the beginning of the word and ending on a high note. This ascending sound is tone two.

The fourth tone is a falling sound and was the easiest for me as I came up with my own cue. I remembered a time or two when my son as a toddler would stand defiantly in front of me and say, “No!” in his irate, little voice. His emphatic, monosyllabic statement would start high and quickly descend to the low end of his voice range. Toddlers seem to universally have the fourth tone down pat!

Tones can be subtle and imperceptible to the western ear, but trust me, native Mandarin speakers can hear these differences. Getting the tone wrong can get you into some highly amusing and sometimes embarrassing verbal predicaments! I ended up in one such predicament when Joseph’s mom was teaching me how to say “Găn xìe”, an alternative Mandarin form of thank you from the more commonly taught “Xìe xìe”. I used a fourth tone instead of a third tone on the “gan” syllable of the word, and went from saying, “Thank you” to “F*#k”. Seriously?! I didn’t just fall off the rails on this one, I face planted off them! Fortunately for me, Joseph’s mom has a great sense of humor and is very understanding.

When I graduated from words to sentences in Mandarin I had to speak very slowly, concentrating on the tones. Once I had the tones down, I’d try to shift from turtle speed to a normal speech cadence. I’d take a running start at a sentence, get halfway through, put a second tone where a fourth tone should be, and fall on my verbal backside. I’d get up, dust myself off,  and take another run at it.

With time and practice, regulating my voice into a regimented pattern of sound came easier, just as keeping my balance on The Rails required less effort than it did initially. I’m happy to say that I’m making very good progress running on The Rails and running through Mandarin tones. I’m even hopeful that in the future I won’t be wishing for a lighter or inadvertently cursing at anyone in Mandarin.