Abstract

This study intended to investigate tonal difficulties encountered by Burundian learners of Chinese. This choice was motivated by the fact that Kirundi and Chinese are both tonal languages and thus might have the same tonal features. However, as Kirundi native speaker, when I was studying Chinese, I encountered difficulties relating to tones, and those difficulties persist. An experiment was carried out on 30 Burundian students in Wuhan, whose mother tongue was Kirundi; all of them had studied Chinese before they began their master’s programs. Participants were asked to read 30 Chinese words carrying different tones while the sounds were being recorded. Chinese native speakers helped to judge the accuracy of their pronunciation. It was found that Kirundi tones affect Chinese tones. However, the age does not significantly show considerable influence, for there is no great difference with regard to ages of participants. The result showed that although Mandarin tones are difficult to learn, yet with a help of local Mandarin teacher and constant practice, students can learn them.