Teaching and Learning the Pronunciation of Mandarin: The 有无道 yǒu wú dào “The Way of yǒu wú”, Part I (Perspective; Method; The 12i)

The aim of this paper is to propose and describe a new approach to teaching and learning the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese. It may be called the 有无道 yǒu wú dào “The Way of What’s-There and What’s-Not-There.” Both name and method are inspired by, 1) a verse in the Dao De Jing, a seminal work traditionally attributed to the sage Laozi, and 2) the dawning digital age initiated by G. Boole in which the Zeros are as important as the Ones, the absences as important as the presences. The method does not aim to replace tried and true methods. It is meant as a possible supplement. It is also designed to be 100% practical and accessible to anyone. Anyone of whatever age might use it as a guide to pronounce Chinese more accurately. The method involves learning and teaching the pronunciation of a sound by comparing what it is (有 yǒu) with what it is not (无 wú), what it is not being the pronunciation of (an)other sound(s). Part of this paper was read in October 2021, half in Chinese and half in English, at the 10^th International Conference of the New England Chinese Language Teachers Association (NECLTA), organized by Tufts University in Boston and held remotely due to Covid. The title was: 努力准确发音普通话: 西方初学者的一些观察 “Struggling to Pronounce Mandarin Accurately: Observations by a Beginner from the West.”¹ The content has evolved and expanded considerably while producing this written paper. With the rise of China and the internet in the past twenty to thirty years, there are plenty of handbooks and videos teaching the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin, which is strictly speaking the language spoken by officials in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Can one more discussion add anything new? I believe it can. Ideally, an oral presentation and teaching probes would have complemented the present paper. Being restricted to writing, this presentation therefore comes with unfortunate limitations. In contemplating all the proposals presented in this paper, it may be useful for a teacher to guide students through all the steps.