In this picture you are looking at the phonetic pronunciation of every word in the Chinese language. There are only about 300 words spoken in the Chinese language.....and they each only have one syllabel. Each word has 4 different tones/pronunciations....the pronunciations at first all sound the same - that takes the list of words to 1400. Then each word can have potentially several meanings - like light and lite kind of.
Training your ear to hear the differences between the tones has been a challenge, but I think I got that part down. Next is sounding things out correctly. The goal is that I understand and speak Mandarin well enough that the next time I come to China I do not have to rely on the help of friends to do everything. It would be nice to be able to set up my own phone service, internet, water, rent an apartment, etc.
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