Quote Originally Posted by Colino View Post
Yeah intonation is the main difficulty. But in all honesty it's not THAT bad. Most Mandarin speakers will still understand what you're saying as long as the context is there. It's not that many sounds to learn.

I have finally come to understand why they yell so much though, they have to make certain you understand the tones they're using.
Yeah I think there's like four different sounds? That's not too bad, but probably as difficult to learn as JP grammar. Not impossible but it takes some time to start "thinking" like them.

It's disgusting how the language is taught though. The particles are reduced to sound similar to "be"-verb even though that isn't even remotely accurate. As long as you can speak certain sentences thats 'good enough', but you never actually understand what you're saying. but that's besides the point.