longer.blue

I hope you don't mind, I will go a little in-depth on the note you posted even though you didn't ask for it. Feel free to ignore :) The youtube videos from grace mandarin chinese you mentioned earlier are very helpful. Because I know IPA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin was also very helpful when I was learning. It also gives audio clips with english explanations which is very nice. I'll ignore the tones for now, those are indeed very tricky and my only advice is to listen a lot and practice a lot. First, for p in pǔ, just like the c in cǎo, you should give more breath -- aspirate more, as the nerds say. Not bad. Looking at your h, it's unfortunately not coming out right just yet; but you'll get there! First, in 话 huà you dropped the h entirely; I hear 'tongua' instead of 'tonghua'. Then, when you say 很 hěn, you give a very english pronunciation. In chinese, h is a "velar consonant" as the language nerds on wikipedia say. That means, it is in the same class as k and g. To make the chinese h, try holding a k sound 'khhh' for a while. Give it extra air too, just like you do with pinyin p t k c ch q etc. For example, try saying 'ccccccrisp', holding the k sound without moving to the 'risp' part of the word. The hissing sound you make when holding the k actually is the chinese h! It does not sound like english h at all, and no english word has this sound. Now if you can do that, try not letting your tongue touch the roof of your mouth at all when saying k. Skip the k in khhhh, and go straight to hhhh! That should be the correct pronunciation of chinese h. It is difficult, and will take much practice, but you will get it in time, I know it! Next, lets look at your pinyin e vowel. This is hopefully much easier, since it's a familiar sound in many english words. You pronounced it perfectly in 的 de, but not in 很 hěn. It is the sound "uhhh" as in "about", not the "ehh" sound as in "🐔hen" or "beg". Now the most difficult, sh. My advice is of course to listen over and over to that youtube video you posted. But if the h trick if worked, there is also another similar trick you can try for sh. It's the same for the other "retroflex consonants" as the nerds call them, pinyin sh, zh, ch, and ri etc. The trick is this: see if you can make english s and sh sounds back to back, like s-sh-s-sh-s-sh-s-sh with no vowel in between. Don't rush. Feel your tongue slide on the roof of your mouth from the forward s position to the middle sh position. English sh is in a similar class as t and d; the tongue is in a similar position. If you say "schtick" or "stick", your tongue barely moves when switching from s to t. That's not true in chinese. Chinese t and d are slightly forward of english. The sh, zh, ch, and ri sounds in chinese are all further back than english sh. As your tongue moves from s to sh, try to keep going a little further in the same direction. Extrapolate the s->sh movement, to get sh(en)->sh(zh). It may feel uncomfortable as it is a new sound. But that is okay! It means you are learning something new. Once you find the retroflex spot, making ch and soft g (garaGe, bonJour, deluSIon) sounds there will make pinyin zh and ri. Pinyin ch is zh with more air. I hope this helps. I know it is a lot, you can ignore it if it is too much or save it for later. I am a fellow learner and not an expert, I am jealous that you have a teacher -- I'd certainly learn faster if I had one. This is the sort of thing that I used to learn, without a teacher to guide me. 加油！