Helping with tones

[character]

The GR topic touched on this, but I'd like to see:

- The Flashcards tone test taking tone-shaped gestures (recently seen in Skritter, but the idea is old).

- Other ways of showing the tone, perhaps behind the character in a different color.

- Voice recognition with tone detection, analysis, and coaching. :wink:

 

[mikelove]

- The Flashcards tone test taking tone-shaped gestures (recently seen in Skritter, but the idea is old).

Easy enough, maybe as a modification to our tone test - enhancements like this are mainly going into the big-update-after-the-next-one since that's largely focused on dictionaries.

- Other ways of showing the tone, perhaps behind the character in a different color.

We're actually planning to remove tone coloring as a default setting (it'll still be an option, but it's just not that aesthetically pleasing and our informal testing has found it actually doesn't help with tone recall as much as we would hope, so we don't want to force it on people or muddy up our screenshots with it), so it makes sense to play around with other ways of indicating them. One thing I've been playing around with in my notebook is drawing tones continuously across a word, sort of like a line graph; teach it as a "shape" rather than a collection of accent marks.

- Voice recognition with tone detection, analysis, and coaching.

That's a ways off - I've seen demos of various technologies attempting to do this and it's just not there yet, I'm sure if someone was willing to invest the money in the necessary research it could get there but I don't know if Pleco's the company to do it.

 

[character]

One thing I've been playing around with in my notebook is drawing tones continuously across a word, sort of like a line graph; teach it as a "shape" rather than a collection of accent marks.

Sounds interesting. Should work better with retina displays and their Android equivalents than earlier screens.

I think I'll also have to try GR, so built-in support of some sort would be welcome.

 

[Vzzzbx]

We're actually planning to remove tone coloring as a default setting <...> our informal testing has found it actually doesn't help with tone recall as much as we would hope

Really? I've found it to be hugely effective, especially (but by no means exclusively) when building the tone colours into mnemonics.

 

[mikelove]

Really? I've found it to be hugely effective, especially (but by no means exclusively) when building the tone colours into mnemonics.

We'll certainly keep it around - we may even have a prompt on startup to ask users if they want it - but it gives our whole app kind of a cartoon-ish, "rainbow" feel that I'm increasingly bothered by, and it seems like a lot more people are confused by it ("what do those colors mean"?) or ignore it altogether than actually use it. But if there's a lot of negative feedback we can change it back, and we'll keep it around as an option in any case (carried over as the default for anybody who's upgrading from an existing Pleco installation) since we know that a lot of people certainly do use it.

 

[Vzzzbx]

Yeah, colouring tones is definitely a niche requirement. Most people I know don't bother (but then, most people I know left tones way too late in their learning).

 

[jamesquek]

The idea of using tones to differentiate meanings in Chinese is a huge problem for Western learners. Therefore, they need additional references to help them grasp the idea. Just technical description, e.g., rising second tone, etc., is not enough.

I have thought long and hard about it in my preparation to teach Hanyu Pinyin to Westerners. Rather than mere technical descriptions, I think it would be a great idea to think of all four tones as moods and emotions, with colors as indications. This is one reason why I think Pleco rates as the best learning dictionary tool; it allows characters to be coloured according to their tones.

This is what I have in my mind:

Tone 1 - High - Bliss, satisfaction - Blue
Tone 2 - Rising - Curious, active, springy - Green
Tone 3 - Low - Sad, depressed, downer - Brown
Tone 4 - Falling - Anger, pain - Red
Tone 5 - Neutral - Neutral - Grey

This is the colour scheme I am using for my Pleco. Yes, as mentioned by a previous poster, it is also great as a memory tool. E.g., 熊, bear, takes Tone 2, therefore Green. Visualize a green or curious bear....

In addition, sometimes I can see the characters in their tonal colors, days after I looked them up, thereby helping me remember their inherent tones.

Mike, maybe you should adopt this as the standard color scheme so it can hopefully be a universal standard. If you do, make the red and brown very distinct.

 

[mikelove]

I have thought long and hard about it in my preparation to teach Hanyu Pinyin to Westerners. Rather than mere technical descriptions, I think it would be a great idea to think of all four tones as moods and emotions, with colors as indications. This is one reason why I think Pleco rates as the best learning dictionary tool; it allows characters to be coloured according to their tones.

Thanks, but I'm still not convinced of its usefulness myself - it's an interesting idea, I was happy to make Pleco the first product to support it (in fact I believe our first tone coloring beta preceded Nathan Dummitt's tone coloring book by at least a few months) and am happy to keep supporting it, but someone really needs to do a long-term study to find out if this actually does help people.

Mike, maybe you should adopt this as the standard color scheme so it can hopefully be a universal standard. If you do, make the red and brown very distinct.

We really can't change our scheme at this point - if we could we'd have abandoned the much-derided (but easily recognizable at least) purple 4th tone a long time ago. The default has to stay the same because if we change it without telling people there'll be all sorts of problems - maybe in a few years if everyone's on iCloud (or some Android equivalent) and we're syncing settings that way we can consider it for new users, but until then we're stuck with it.