Chinese listening, fast and slow: Three ways of slowing down Mandarin speech

Spoken Mandarin can feel like an onslaught of similar sounds, half-recognised tones and unknown words. To add insult to injury, it’s often too fast! Should you slow it down? If so, how?

In this article, we will explore three different kinds of slow Chinese to see what pros and cons they have for learners. Here are the three methods:

1. Listen to someone who speaks slowly
2. Slow down recorded audio using software
3. Insert pauses at appropriate locations

As we shall see, listening to Mandarin at a lower rate of speech can aid comprehension and learning, but there are also downsides you should be aware of.

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast to listen to the related episode (#284).

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1. You need to listen a lot to become a fluent listener
2. Understanding more leads to learning more Chinese
3. Slow Chinese, method 1: Listen to slowly spoken Chinese
   1. Slowly spoken Mandarin is not pronounced the same way
   2. The faster the speech, the more the sounds and tones change
   3. Why you shouldn’t listen to Mandarin spoken slowly too much
4. Slow Chinese, method 2: Use software to slow the audio
   1. Pros and cons of slowing down recorded Mandarin
   2. Why you shouldn’t slow Mandarin down too much, too often
   3. If it’s too fast, listen to something easier instead
5. Slow Chinese, method 3: Insert pauses at natural boundaries
   1. Inserting pauses while speaking or in recorded Mandarin
   2. Inserting pauses using Audacity
6. Conclusion: All methods have pros and cons; use them wisely
7. Use other methods to understand more of the Chinese you listen to
8. References and further reading

You need to listen a lot to become a fluent listener

Processing speed is often a bottleneck for second-language learners, meaning that even if you understand all the words and all the grammar, you might still not be able to understand what someone says simply because it’s too fast.

Yes, you know the words, but you recall them too slowly. And yes, you might have studied the grammar patterns, but you haven’t internalised them through enough listening. If you need to think about what the most common words and phrases mean, it’s not enough!

For a more academic overview of factors influencing listening, see Vandergrift and Goh (2012). For a full course aimed at helping you overcome challenges with listening comprehension in Chinese, see The Fluent Listener: Navigating Spoken Mandarin Like a Fish in Water.

Before we explore the three different ways of slowing down spoken Mandarin, we need to talk about listening comprehension and language development.

Understanding more leads to learning more Chinese

Two factors are important when we talk about changing the rate of speech: listening comprehension and language development.

• Listening comprehension refers to how much you understand of what is said in this specific spoken passage, in the moment, right now. If this were a test, it would be asking questions about the content. Listening comprehension would be your score.
• Language development is about how much your Mandarin improves as a result of listening. It’s not limited to learning things about what people say in a dialogue or what a recorded text is about. If we’re talking about tests, it wouldn’t be your score on this test, but one in the future. Also, it would be a general proficiency test covering all areas of Mandarin, not just listening ability.

Most research into the effects of modifying the rate of speech focuses on listening comprehension, not language development.

This is likely because of practical and methodological constraints. It’s relatively easy to let two groups of students listen to the same content delivered at different speeds and check their comprehension.

Figuring out how much their Mandarin improved as a result of listening is almost impossible, though, because the effects are subtle and only visible in the long term. This would require a research design that is complex, impractical, time-consuming and expensive, which means that less research of this kind is conducted.

Still, there’s a strong reason to believe that, in general at least, comprehension leads to language development. In effect, the more you understand, the more you learn. The more you understand, the more likely you are to learn things you didn’t already know, such as an unfamiliar word or a familiar word used in a new way.

Learning Chinese through comprehensible input

 

Slow Chinese, method 1: Listen to slowly spoken Chinese

The first method we’re going to look at is perhaps the most obvious one: simply ask the speaker to slow down or find someone who speaks slowly in the first place.

Most teachers do this automatically, and almost all textbooks have audio recorded at a very slow pace. This is true for other learning resources as well.

This seems to be an awesome method, because it leads to a better understanding of what is said. To learn words and grammar, including how they are used in context, you need to understand what you’re listening to, so it follows that if speech is slow, you’ll learn more.

This is also true, at least in general, and research supports it as well, but there is a major downside you should be aware of, beyond the fact that you might not have someone who can or wants to speak slowly to you.

Slowly spoken Mandarin is not pronounced the same way

When you slow down your rate of speech, you don’t say the same thing, just over a longer period of time; you actually change the way you pronounce words, sometimes by a lot. This is a well-known fact in phonology that most normal people are not aware of (see e.g. Smiljanić & Bradlow, 2009).

In English, sounds influence each other all the time. For example, the “n” in the word “input” is often pronounced “m” in context: “imput”; “p” uses both lips, and “no” doesn’t, so switching so they both do makes it easier to say. Another example is “did you”, which, when spoken rapidly, turns into “didju”, where the end of “did” and the beginning of “you” have merged into one sound.

These things are extremely common in all spoken languages and happen all the time, not just for cherry-picked words. For an overview of this in English and why it’s relevant for listening comprehension, I strongly recommend Cauldwell’s Phonology for Listening (2013).

The point here is that sounds change differently depending on how quickly you speak. If a beginner of English asks you to clearly enunciate the word “input” or the phrase “did you”, you are not going to say “imput” or “didju”, but it’s highly likely that you do say that when you speak naturally with other native speakers.

The faster the speech, the more the sounds and tones change

This is not Hacking English, though, but I wanted to include this so you know what I’m talking about, using a familiar language first.

In Mandarin, sounds and tones also change. In fact, we have the same type of change as for “input” in words like 面包 (miànbāo), which is normally pronounced miàmbāo for the same reason.

Tones can also behave differently with different speaking rates. This is particularly true for the third tone (Shih, 1997). In natural speech, 我很好 (wǒ hěn hǎo), “I’m good”, will almost always be pronounced wó hén hǎo, but in your textbook audio recording, wǒ probably is pronounced with a low tone.

Learning the third tone in Mandarin Chinese

The rate of speech has many effects on pronunciation beyond the third tone (see Duanmu, 2007, for an overview). Neutral tones, or unstressed syllables, become more common and are reduced further the quicker someone speaks.

When asked to enunciate the word 衣服 (yīfu), many native speakers will say yīfu, but in natural speech, it’s often just yīf (without the final vowel sound). Some native speakers even say yīfú when speaking clearly. Read more here: Learning the neutral tone in Mandarin.

Learning the neutral tone in Mandarin

Why you shouldn’t listen to Mandarin spoken slowly too much

The point here is that your goal is to understand normal people, not professional teachers speaking to foreigners. To do this successfully, your brain needs data about how the language works naturally in context, not when intentionally spoken slowly and deliberately.

Another issue is that natural intonation usually goes out the window as soon as someone starts speaking too slowly, so this is yet another area that slowly spoken Mandarin won’t help you to deal with.

That being said, the benefits of listening to someone speaking slowly shouldn’t be underplayed either. It really does lead to higher comprehension. Your goal when listening is not only to study sounds as they occur in the wild, after all, but also to understand the words and the meaning behind the words. This way you can communicate with others, make sense of what they’re saying and also gather data about how words and phrases are used.

Just don’t do it too much. The more advanced your Chinese is, the less you should rely on slowly spoken Mandarin. If you struggle to comprehend, choose less complex listening materials or simply listen more than once.

Listen more than once: How the replay button can help you learn more Chinese

Slow Chinese, method 2: Use software to slow the audio

Using computers to slow down spoken language seems to get rid of the main downsides of listening to slowly spoken language.

• You can slow down recorded audio whenever you want, for free. Most audiobook players, podcast apps and video platforms have this feature built in. You can also use a program like Audacity, which is cross-platform and free. It’s extremely convenient, takes no time to achieve, and you don’t need to ask anyone for help.
• You can control the rate of speech. Too fast? Slow down! Too slow? Speed up! While most tools don’t let you set a specific speed, the increments are usually good enough. On YouTube, for example, you can set the playback speed in increments of 5%.
• Sound and tone changes are preserved, just slowed down. If we return to the example from earlier, if someone indeed does say 我很好 as wó hén hǎo, they will still do so even at half speed.

Pros and cons of slowing down recorded Mandarin

Again, it would seem that this is an ideal method, because it achieves the same result (slower rate of speech and more time to process the spoken language), but without the major drawbacks of simply speaking more slowly.

This is true, up to a point. If you want to study how tones are really pronounced, or how somebody actually pronounced a word, slowing down the audio can help a lot. Some things are simply too hard to hear at full speed.

You also do get extra time to process what you hear, and sometimes even a 10% or 20% decrease in speed can increase comprehension significantly.

Why you shouldn’t slow Mandarin down too much, too often

Still, there are other downsides, though:

• Artificially slowed-down speech is not natural either. Depending on how we define “natural”, this is an artificial form of listening. Nobody really speaks like this. As mentioned earlier, if someone slows down, they also change the way they speak.
• When audio is slowed down too much, it can result in artefacts and distortions in the audio. This is much less of a problem with modern algorithms, but it can still be an issue if you slow down the audio a lot. In my experience, it’s a bad idea to slow down audio more than to 80% speed.
• You get used to listening to audio at a certain speed. If you always slow audio down, you don’t get enough practice with audio at full speed. In other words, getting used to a faster rate of speech takes practice! Just try increasing speed beyond 100% in your native language. At first, it will sound weird, but you’ll get used to it. I regularly listen to podcasts at twice the speed, for example.

In my experience, slowing down audio using software works best when done moderately, which is a problem, because this also means that it won’t aid comprehension all that much.

On the other hand, if the Chinese you’re listening to is at the right level, slowing down even by 10-20% can result in a jump in comprehension. If so, that’s great!

If it’s too fast, listen to something easier instead

If you feel that you need to decrease speed by much more than that, though, I think your listening material is too hard, and the solution is to find something more suitable, not slow down the recording even more.

For recommendations about suitable listening material at different levels, see:

• The 10 best free Chinese listening resources for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners
• Beginner Chinese listening practice: What to listen to and how
• The best YouTube channels for learning Chinese

The 10 best free Chinese listening resources for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners

Slow Chinese, method 3: Insert pauses at natural boundaries

The third way of slowing down spoken Chinese is to not change or manipulate the rate of speech at all, but instead insert pauses where there are natural breaks already, such as between phrases and sentences. This can increase comprehension (Blau, 1991; Van Loon, 2000). This has the effect of lowering the rate of speech overall (you hear fewer syllables per minute, including the pauses), without changing anything about the language between the pauses.

Inserting pauses while speaking or in recorded Mandarin

There are two ways of doing this, each reminiscent of the two methods we’ve already discussed. First, you can ask someone to insert pauses. Second, you can insert pauses in recorded speech.

The first option is something most teachers do as a strategy to increase student comprehension. Instead of just talking without pausing, we give students time to process each sentence.

This is good for comprehension, but can still lead to somewhat unnatural pronunciation, especially when it comes to prosody. Within phrase pronunciation should still be quite natural if done correctly, however.

The downside here, of course, is that you have to have someone who’s willing to talk to you like this.

Inserting pauses using Audacity

The second option is more realistic for individual students. The easiest way to achieve this is simply hit the pause button when there’s a break and continue after a while.

This is hard to do well, though, because if you pause at the wrong moment, pausing will make it harder to understand, not easier! You can combine this with listening again, of course.

Another way is to find audio that already has this kind of pause, but this is exceedingly rare. You could also edit the audio file and insert the pauses yourself, again using a program like Audacity that I mentioned earlier.

This is not hard, but it’s still inconvenient enough that I think it’s not practically feasible most of the time. There are plugins that do this for Audacity, but they might be a bit finicky to get working properly.

Conclusion: All methods have pros and cons; use them wisely

All methods we have looked at have pros and cons.

Slowly spoken Chinese is not actually fast Chinese slowed down, but a different register altogether. Sounds and tones are not pronounced the same way. Still, it’s great for improving comprehension.

Slowing a recording down with software is easy and lets you hear changes in sounds and tones. It becomes less useful the more it’s used, both in the sense that the quality drops, and also in that you get used to processing at lower speeds.

Inserting pauses to give you more processing time is probably the best compromise, but it has the major flaw of being prohibitively inconvenient unless you have the good fortune of someone already preparing the listening materials for you.

Use other methods to understand more of the Chinese you listen to

In conclusion, I think you should use all three methods discussed in this article, but not all the time. Most of your listening should be done at natural speed. If you find it too difficult to understand, simply listen to something else.

Another great option, which has none of the downsides and all of the upsides, is simply to listen more than once. This has been shown to increase comprehension a lot, but you still process natural Mandarin at full speed. I’ve written more about this here: Listen more than once: How the replay button can help you learn more Chinese.

References and further reading

Blau, E. K. (1991). More on Comprehensible Input: The Effect of Pauses and Hesitation Markers on Listening Comprehension.

Cauldwell, R. (2013). Phonology for listening. Birmingham: Speech in Action.

Duanmu, S. (2007). The phonology of standard Chinese. Oxford University Press

Shih, C. (1997). Mandarin third tone sandhi and prosodic structure. Linguistic Models, 20, 81-124.

Smiljanić, R., & Bradlow, A. R. (2009). Speaking and hearing clearly: Talker and listener factors in speaking style changes. Language and linguistics compass, 3(1), 236-264.

Vandergrift, L., & Goh, C. (2012). Teaching and learning second language listening: Metacognition in action. New York.

Van Loon, J. (2000). Using pauses to improve listening comprehension for second language learners (Doctoral dissertation).