I am having so much fun with it.
As everybody knows the difficulty with Mandarin and other Asian languages (I don't know if all or most are like this, or just some) is that tonality changes the meaning of words. This is weird for us because we use tonality to indicate something else all together. Think of the difference between:
"you like tea." statement
"you like tea.!" surprise
and "you like tea?" question.
This is what tonality does for us.
Here is an example of what it does for Mandarin:
"Cha" (voice going up) means "tea" - "Cha" (voice going down) means "bad"
In Mandarin there are 4 tonalities, in Cantonese there are 8, another reason why I am pleased I chose Mandarin!
Here is another example but this time with the 4 tonalities:
"Ma"(flat, high - 1st tonality) means "mother"
"Ma" (voice up - 2nd tonality) means "hemp"
"Ma" (voice down then up - 3rd tonality) means "horse"
"Ma" (voice down - 4th tonality) means "curse"
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