Jiaozi on the zhuozi

I started a new language exchange recently with a Chinese girl who works in Tokyo. I'm very glad I did it. There's no substitute to practicing with a native speaker, especially when it comes to Chinese it seems.

You have to hit those tones spot on, or you won't be understood at all, it's like fine tuning a frickin harp! One missed vowel sound and the comprehension level just completely disappears.

I've been doing a lot of practice listening and repeating to try and get my pronunciation down, but I think I need to be more conscientious of the tones when I learn a new word, and perhaps practice my vowel sounds a bit more too. I couldn't get her to understand 桌子 (zhuozi: table) all night, but that's because I had it written down as zhouzi (o before u) and I kept pronouncing it wrong, I also fouled up and said 饺子 (jiaozi: dumpling) by mistake once aswell.

She kept repeating it for me, and I would copy her 5 or 6 times, move on, and then make the same mistake 5 or 6 minutes later. In the end I decided to make a mnemonic connecting the pronunciation to "Jaws" the movie in my head—it's not a perfect match, but it'll do for now.

It was only later that I realized I had written the damn word down wrong and this was probably the reason for my repeated failure to get the pronunciation right.

Anyway, when your in the thick of these conversations it makes you wish you'd spent a bit more time on the tones and pronunciation of the words when you first learnt them, so I'll be trying to do that a bit more in future.