On another page on the same site is a clear explanation of Mandarin Tones. It begins
"Tones are probably the biggest difficulty for anyone learning to speak Mandarin. As a learner, you have to go through a long process from total unawareness of tones to eventually mastering them (which will probably take years)."I am relieved to hear that it takes such a long time to learn the tones as I thought I wasn't mastering this as well as I could. As I am learning Chinese via distance / online education, have no opportunity to speak with native speakers and am often time poor, I feel a bit better about not mastering the tones at this stage of my learning. Much appreciated East Asian Student.
No problem! Glad to have been helpful :)
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteMandarin Chinese is a tonal language. It means that a tone is associated with each syllable. The meaning of the word is completely different if you change the tone. There are four tones in Mandarin Chinese, the high level tone, the rising tone, the falling rising tone and the falling tone. Thanks a lot...
Chinese Language Schools
Its true that learning tones is most difficult task while learning Chinese.Tone is associated with each syllable & if you change the tone then meaning of particular word will become different. So we should take care of tones while speaking.
ReplyDelete