有关语音、语调的教学内容节选
淳于金章
1. Now let’s have a brief introduction about the Diagram. First let’s compare the following in different accents:
现在简单介绍一下我们的教学内容。首先，我们来对比不同的口音：
e.g. Good morning! What’s your task?
classroom and blackboard, my father and my mother,
As is known to everybody, the vowels are the core of any languages. So in order to standardize the pronunciation of English vowels, phoneticians invented a diagram illustrating vividly the side view of the oral cavity and showing clearly the pronouncing positions of different vowels. Originally these positions are invisible and untouchable but with the help of the diagram they become not only visible but also touchable.
2. Now let’s have a brief introduction about the intonation, idiomatically we say tunes, and about the tune horizontal, which is my innovation/patent.
现在简单介绍一下语调和语调水平线，这是我的专利发明。
First I’d like to ask how many tunes are there in the English language?
I believe 99% of people including the teachers of English would answer: there are two, the falling and the rising. But I’d like to clarify that this answer should be correct 40 or 50 years ago.
English intonation is English. It’s not the same as the intonation of our Chinese and any other languages. We must learn the shapes of the English tunes. We must learn the meanings of the English tunes too. Nowadays the correct answer should also be two. But one is the falling and the other is the falling and rising, for example:
Yes, No, Well, All right Last week I went to the theater
Are you a teacher? But I’m not a teacher.
If we use the so-called rising tune to read the same, it would be like this: (to demonstrate) That sounds irritating, ear-piercing, inscrutable, and even badly-educated. A survey shows that whether or not a piece of narration can be well accepted by the audience depends 30% on its content; 20% on the speaker’s voice quality and timbre; 10% on the speaker’s pose of body; and 40% on the tune that the speaker uses. From this survey we can see how important the tune is. The most frequently used tune in Queen’s English is the falling one. Next to it, is the falling and rising, which means if you want to make your tune rise, let it fall first. Now let’s share my horizontal theory about tunes.
Talking about the tune we cannot help thinking of the music. Talking about the music, we cannot help thinking of the piano, which is the father of music. Open the piano, we must first establish the key of central C. From this point and right hand upward we get the rising tune and left hand downward we get the falling tune. Further more, according to the geometry and its point and line fundamentals that any line is the extension of a point. If we take the central “c” as our basic pitch point and make it extended in two different directions, we’ll get a tune horizontal. All the tunes must go along and beneath the horizontal line. If the tune goes up and over the line, we’ll get the rising tune (demonstrate again the above mentioned examples). Be sure that you never use the rising tune unless it’s really necessary in some special situation. For example: if you shout at somebody standing 100 metres away from you, you have to use the rising tune instead of the falling tune (to demonstrate). The person who responds should also use the rising tune.
More examples for the rising or strange tunes: “I’m not a teacher.” “Coming up next.” “But many people” Regrettably we can often hear these kind of irritating tones made even by our CCTV anchors and hosts.
3. Let’s learn and illustrate roughly the falling and rising tune, and its characteristics.
现在我们来粗略地了解一下降升调的特点。
It has three different patterns:
a. Pointed Fall and Rise (or the full fall and full rise) e.g.
“All right” “Are you a teacher?” “Don’t be late!”
b. Rounded Fall and Rise, vividly we call it snake-pattern. e.g.
1. “Will you join us – I’d like to.”
2. “Don’t speak like that.”
3. “Would you mind me smoking here?”
4. “I don’t need any help from you.”
c. Full Fall and Half Rise. e.g.:
“Excuse me” “Give me a chance.” “I’m coming to see you.”
In the falling and rising tune, as its name indicates, the tune always goes down first and then rises. If you want to rise, you must let the tune fall first. For a word with one syllable we can use one falling and rising tune. For a word or a sentence with two or even more than ten syllables we can also use one falling and rising tune. One more example:
Do you have a Chinese-English dictionary?
Be sure the starting sound and the ending sound are controlled on the same pitch point otherwise a strange tune will appear. The use of different tunes can not only make our speaking sound pleasant, but also can express the speaker’s different implications. Usually the meaning of a sentence is decided by three factors: word, word order and tune. If a sentence is spoken in different tunes, the meaning of it is surely different. For example:
1. I don’t need any help from you.
a. falling: angrily
b. full fall/half rise: naturally
c. rounded fall/rise: humorously
2. Don’t be late.
a. falling: you must be on time.
b. full fall/half rise: you can’t be late, can’t you?
c. pointed fall/rise: please don’t be late again.
3. “Thank you.” may be said in two ways. In the first, the voice starts high and ends low. It means a real gratitude. In the second, the voice starts high and ends high. It means a casual acknowledgement of something not important. If an English friend asks you to spend weekend at his home, and you reply in the second instead of the first, your friend will take offence. He would think you are being impolite.
4. How can we get a good command of Queen’s English?
我们怎样才能学好英语普通话？
For any kind of language learning, phonetic alphabets always go first. To have a good command of them we must resort to the help of the phonetic diagram. Good phonetics can result in good pronunciation; good pronunciation can result in good intonation; and a good intonation can result in a good reading-aloud. A good reading-aloud will naturally result in an excellent Queen’s English. To pronounce the vowels well, we must first make sure of their sound positions in the phonetic diagram, make sure whether it is the front, the middle or the back one! In the meantime we must make sure whether it is a long one or a short one. The long vowels must be prolonged enough. For the diphthongs we should make them as full as possible, and as long as the long vowels. For the consonants we must make sure of their mouth shapes and the tongue positions and we must try to make each of them pronounced as clearly as possible.
Besides, the stress in a word is also so important as to be indispensable to a word. Why could a piece of melody always please our ears? The main reason is that it has rhythms. And the rhythms are decided by the sound length and the word stress. If the sound length and word stress are wrong we will not get a correct rhythm. Good pronunciation and intonation of both Chinese and English are much related to the length, the rhythm, the stress, liaison and mood. e.g. in Chinese, “好”, “再见吧！自由的元素”…； in English, “Last week…”, “good better best…”, “one, two, three, four, Mary at the cottage door…”.
Girls and boys, we can learn vocabulary and grammar by ourselves, but we cannot learn the pronunciation and intonation by ourselves, which can only be learned through imitating tapes and CD or good teachers. It is crucial for us to select the right tape and CD to imitate and a good teacher to follow. For the right tape what I can recommend you here is the New Concept English. By the way this year is the 40th anniversary of this set of books since its publication. In Beijing there are some commemorative activities. But for the right teachers you have to try your own luck.
5. Before today’s lecture is over, I’ll present you five sentences as a tiny gift.
今天的授课即将结束，我送给大家一个小礼物。
1). If you do what people don’t do today, you’ll do what people can’t do tomorrow.
2). If you want to learn/teach English well, you must practise reading aloud for at least half an hour every morning, but be sure on the basis of the Queen’s English.
3).Queen’s English is the magic pill that can do wonders in your English learning and teaching or in your future job hunting.
4). The turning of one’s fate usually starts from a new idea.
5). The understanding is just beneath your feet.