Shadowing/Chorusing Tonal Languages
Posted: Thu May 17, 2018 1:23 am
I'm one of those 'input' guys that has focused quite too narrowly on reading and listening and left speaking to 'later' (i.e. it has been 10 years.) I've decided it is time to really get my mouth moving in Cantonese. While I can speak one-character-at-a-time fairly well when reading out loud, I'd like to do some Shadowing/Chorusing to really get the intonation of sentences down.
I've only toyed with Shadowing/Chorusing before and usually I do what I call "short-loop-chorusing of sentences" which is basically: highlight a sentence of audio in Audacity, hit SHIFT-SPACEBAR to repeat the sentence over and over, and try to speak over the top of the sentence repeatedly (with one headphone on and one headphone off so I can hear myself and the dialog at the same time). After say ~10-20 times, whenever I can say it smoothly, I move to the next sentence.
Questions:
Note that I do cheat slightly and slow the Audio in Audacity by like -15% (depending on the Audio), but often this is still rocket speed.
I've only toyed with Shadowing/Chorusing before and usually I do what I call "short-loop-chorusing of sentences" which is basically: highlight a sentence of audio in Audacity, hit SHIFT-SPACEBAR to repeat the sentence over and over, and try to speak over the top of the sentence repeatedly (with one headphone on and one headphone off so I can hear myself and the dialog at the same time). After say ~10-20 times, whenever I can say it smoothly, I move to the next sentence.
Questions:
- Has anyone done something similar? Was it effective/efficient in your opinion?
- Cantonese, being a tonal language, seems to present its own challenge as at full native speed it is VERY difficult for me to get the tones right. I know in real usage the tones get mushed a bit, but I'm somewhat concerned that my output is quite a bit more mushed. Anyone have any thoughts on that?
- Should I, as they say in the weight room, "just shut up and keep lifting the d*** bar"?
Note that I do cheat slightly and slow the Audio in Audacity by like -15% (depending on the Audio), but often this is still rocket speed.