are as tonal as “Standard” Chinese (Mandarin), which has four tones—though some, such as Cantonese, have more tones. For the purpose of this article, however, we will discuss 普通话 (Pǔtōnghuà, where ...

Cantonese is said to be closer than Mandarin to ancient Chinese. It is also more complicated. Mandarin has four tones, so a character can be intonated four ways with four meanings. Cantonese has ...

As any student of Mandarin Chinese will know, China can be a maddening place. You can practice your four tones to no end, wildly waving one arm in the air while drawing invisible tone marks ...

Four-and-a-half tones are used, meaning a single word can have many ... But that's changing." GCSE entries for the Chinese languages of Mandarin and Cantonese crept up to just under 4,000 last year.

Tone languages - Mandarin and Vietnamese ... For students who had begun musical training between ages 4 and 5, approximately 60 percent of the Chinese speakers tested as having perfect pitch ...

Pinyin is essentially the Latin alphabet without the ‘v,’ as this sound isn’t used in Chinese. In Pinyin, the four tones of Mandarin Chinese are represented by diacritical marks or tone ...

It was easier for me to decipher Zuckerberg’s Chinese ... me.) Mandarin grammar is relatively simple; probably the most difficult part is the pronunciation, especially the four tones.