Learning Cantonese tones.
I now extend the discussion to consider an instructional approach in which the pattern of variation and invariance is theoretically based.[3] Ki and Marton (2003) investigated the difficult process of learning Cantonese tones by adult foreigners.Cantonese is a complex dialect of Chinese,and spoken Chinese words are distinguished by both sound and tone.This means that two or more words pronounced with the same sound can have (and usually do have) two or more different meanings based on distinctions in tone or pitch.There are six different tones in Cantonese:high level,high rising,mid level,low level,low falling,and low rising.One might believe that Cantonese speakers are more sensitive to tonal differences,but this is not the case.Stagray and Downs (1993) compared native speakers of English and Cantonese and concluded that the former actually made finer discriminations in pair—wise comparisons of singular tones.Thus there must be another explanation for foreigners' difficulties with Cantonese.