Dear Benny

I have decided to learn Chinese this summer while I am out of grad school and just working full-time. I have studied Linguistics and several foreign languages, and I find it frustrating that the textbook and DVD ROM I bought do not carefully go over how to pronounce Chinese sounds and the point of articulation. There is audio for the sounds, but that isn’t clear enough.

Could you do a lesson or series that shows us the pin ying (sp?) of each Chinese sound that also shows your mouth when you pronounce the sound? You could use the technique of contrasting minimal pairs, that is, pronouncing words that are identical except for one sound that your viewers would likely have difficulty with. For example, when I taught Indonesian kids English, I’d have them say ‘bad’ and ‘bed’ to learn the difference between the vowels in those words. Indonesians say bad like bed, but with a longer vowel.

I think most Americans have difficulty differentiating Chinese sounds. There are several sounds that sound like ‘sh’, ‘s’ and ‘ch’ and I don’t know if I can tell them apart.