Chinese is considered the most difficult to learn for several reasons. These include: the lack of an alphabet, the presence of several pronunciation tones, the similarity in the sound of many words among themselves.
The lack of an alphabet and letters in Chinese
In the Chinese language there are no letters and alphabets, which plunges people who are accustomed to the opposite state of things into a stupor. Instead, there is a huge number of hieroglyphs, each hieroglyph means one syllable. Some words consist of one character, that is, they are pronounced in one syllable.
Other words include two or more characters, which means the presence of several syllables. You don’t know how to read this or that hieroglyph unless you memorize it first. There are really thousands of hieroglyphs, but they are repeated.
Hieroglyphs are more common in everyday speech, they are usually remembered first. To remember a character, you need to register it many times. Only in this way will the hand reach automatism in its reproduction.
You need to remember and pronunciation, how to read a character. Especially for those who want to learn their language, the Chinese came up with the Latin equivalent called "pinyin". At the same time, far from everyone in China knows pinyin, mainly educators.
New characters in Chinese textbooks are signed with pinyin in brackets after themselves. You must also remember the tone that the vowel in the character has. Usually 4 tones are distinguished, but upon closer inspection, you can also select the fifth.
4 tones in pronunciation
By tone is meant the intonation with which a particular vowel is pronounced. In words of two or more characters, each vowel has its own tone, which can cause confusion for beginners. You can briefly consider each of the tones.
The first tone is indicated by a straight line, the intonation is even. This tone can be sung on one note. The second tone looks like a Russian-language accent, it gives the word a slightly interrogative intonation.
The third tone is one of the most difficult to pronounce. It has the appearance of a check mark and transmits a sound that resembles immersion in a sound hole. It is not easy to describe in words the subtleties of the pronunciation of the third tone, therefore it is better to listen to the audio for clarification.
The fourth tone looks like a mirror image of stress, and it gives the word a kind of affirmative intonation. Many emit a fifth tone, which is an incomplete third. In this case, the third tone is pronounced in half.
