Tones

As you saw in the last post these - ǒ à é ō - are just a few of the special characters used in Pinyin. Chinese is a Tonal Language. That means you can have the spelling "zhi" but different meanings depending on how you pronounce it. The easy part is that the shapes above the letter dictate the pitch of your voice.

Examples:
ǒ You start at normal voice level, get deep and back up to where you started at.
à You start at normal voice level and go deeper.
é You start at a deeper voice level and go higher.
ō Just normal voice. No inflection whatsoever.

There are better examples on the internet of exactly what I am talking about for those who are truly interested. Just type "Chinese Tones" in Gxxgle. So I am giving Chinese an additional negative, but possibly a positive. It depends on how you look at it. I am a musician. When I play music I am listening to tones and creating tones and making stuff work together.

This is supposed to be one of the hardest things about Chinese. The fact that we as English speaks use inflection to define our mood. Such as a teenaged girl saying Hiiiiii as her voice slowly gets to a higher pitch to express her surprise and/or happiness. That game is over, you can not do that with Chinese. It will be a bad habit to break, but all in time.