Let's talk about tones......the bit that makes Chinese so God Damn difficult :) the bit that gives you nightmares :)) Mandarin or the north dialect and also the official language in China had 4 tones .Some say that it actually has 5 the fifth one being the toneless one. I say there are 4 tones. Tones get attached to almost every character. Now to make it clear for you ''words'' in Chinese can have 1,2 or 3 characters. For ex: 花 has one character and it means ''flower'', 水果 has 2 characters and it means ''fruits'', 洗衣机 has 3 characters and it means ''washing machine''.
Let's take 水果 ; it has 2 characters 水（ 3rd tone) and 果( 3rd tone). So each character gets a tone except a few which are toneless.
Now bellow you have a picture of how tones in Chinese look like and a reference for each to know how to pronounce it :
- Now let's take the 1st one : it sound like the sound you make when you say Ahhhh... so it long .
- The 2nd one it sounds like the sound you make when you ask What? ...just say What out loud and take the sound you hear and attach it to every character that has a 2nd tone.
- The 3rd one sounds like the sound you make when you say Well.... it's long with high and low pitched fluctuation in the sound
- The 4th one, the one I say perfectly cause I tend to get angry easily it sounds the same as the sound you make when you say No! , it's short
Don't get scared, if you get a teacher and you practice each and every one of them for like 30 times you'll get it :)
My Chinese friends told me foreigners always mix up a tone or two once in a while but they understand from the context so as long as you are able to pronounce the Pinyin right they will get it. My advice is ask someone to pronounce it and you repeat after him/her 30 times that way the brain gets familiar with the pronunciation of that character and you won't think of the tone so much . Don't get stuck in the tone phase even if you make mistakes in the beginning you will correct them in time.
Just give your best .....and keep going !!!! You'll get there!!
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See you next time !!
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