Speaking Practice (Resolved but if more natives/fluent speakers can give advice it would be great!)

[lapis pendant]

I made a video of me speaking mandarin in a video game. Can someone correct my speech?
https://youtu.be/_sBqmby3t_U

Btw I don't expect anyone to watch the entire video and give me a full analysis

[unreal latch]

I typed up a whole thing but discord decided to disconnect and delete it all, grrrrrr

lemme try to summarize

[frank cobalt]

you need to be more tonal and you need to correct your tongue posture for a lot of words

x sound is not sh sound for exmaple

listen to xi jinping talk or something, his tongue position is different and the way he speaks is more powerful and tonal

[unreal latch]

three things I noticed mainly

1. tones are sometimes inconsistent. Tone 3 seems to trip you up the most. You can try the app Cantone to monitor your tone contours

2. your r especially sounds English-like, and to a lesser extent your j and x sometimes. In English, r/j/sh come with a degree of automatic lip rounding, i.e. there's always an implied w, so that write/rite are pronounced identically

try saying English 'run', 'gee', and 'she' and notice how your lips start off narrow and widen moving into the vowel. In Mandarin, when saying 人 ren2 機 ji1 洗 xi3, you should be able to maintain the same lip shape throughout

So you'll wanna work on not adding that w automatically unless it's actually there, e.g. contrast 軟 ruan3 vs 染 ran3

3. your 現 xian4 sounds like sen

[frank cobalt]

chinese r has a curled tongue, english r is more like a w, try talking from the back of your mouth more if that makes sense

[frank cobalt]

curl your tongue back when talking in general

[lapis pendant]

Lmao

[lapis pendant]

Thanks a bunch

[lapis pendant]

Ok

@frank cobalt @unreal latch you have any recommendations for pronounciation resources?

[unreal latch]

not sure, maybe others can chime in

[lapis pendant]

I'm aiming for a Taiwanese accent so I'm not gonna shadow him but I'll take a look at his speeches or something

[lapis pendant]

Speaking Practice (Resolved but if more natives/fluent speakers can give advice it would be great!)

[frank cobalt]

just curious why taiwanese

[lapis pendant]

It cool

[serene trail]

I'm aiming for a Taiwanese accent
If you're aiming for a Taiwanese accent, you need to tone down your retroflex consonants, because right now you sound like a northerner. This is especially true with the X sound: it should not sound like the SH sound. For a standard accent, the X sound is in between the S sound and the SH sound.
For a Taiwanese accent, treat Z/C/S and J/Q/X as the same sounds, and lightly distinguish them with ZH/CH/SH. Keep your English R's: those are fine for this accent.
I have no idea what KiTTY is talking about with this "there's always an implied w" in an English R, because there's no such thing. "Write" and "rite" are pronounced the same despite being written differently because of etymological reasons, not because the English R is hiding some sort of W sound. There are accents in British English where the R sound is pronounced like a W sound, but those accents are rare, and since you're from north America, this shouldn't even be a problem for you.
you have any recommendations for pronounciation resources?
KiTTY mentioned the app Cantone, which apparently monitors your pitch contours.
I'd say just keep speaking and listening to yourself. It helps to shadow people whose accents you want to emulate, and challenge yourself to sound like them.
The reason your tones are off is because your native intonation patterns are interfering with your ability to produce tones correctly. English has pitch variations as well, and you'd have internalised the patterns of how pitch is supposed to vary, and subconsciously importing those patterns when speaking Chinese. There's really not much else you can do other than train more.

[lapis pendant]

thanks for the tips! I might shadow Taiwanese people now, I've always been consuming mixed content for a while

also I don't go into linguistics, what is a retroflex constant?

[serene trail]

The ZH/CH/SH sounds are called retroflex consonants.

[lapis pendant]

oh

[serene trail]

You're curling your tongue way too much for a Taiwanese accent.

[lapis pendant]

I wonder where I got that habit

[serene trail]

Your English? North Americans generally roll their R's.

[lapis pendant]

ok

[lapis pendant]

Also I did check out Cantone last night, I realized I can't make a good 3rd tone

[serene trail]

It's just a dip in your pitch and holding it there.

[lapis pendant]

Oh and also how's my grammar and vocab usage?

[serene trail]

Generally ok, but there are some errors. Minor ones, so not really going to do a full-blown line analysis.

[lapis pendant]

gotcha

[serene trail]

For example, around 0:25, the caption says 【除了 Hard Skull 意外】when it should be 以外.

[lapis pendant]

that was a typo

I'll also make another video on Ch. 2 so I'll post here again