dameng

On 2019/6/10 at AM9点48分, hqmmhd said:

I'm trying to learn mandarin. However I'm freaking tone deaf and it's hard as hell for me to differentiate between different words. I just cant quite tell the difference between Ma, Ma, Ma and/or Ma. which Ma? I dont know. They all sound the same to me but can mean different things. I'm so used to spoken english and how forgiving it is, that even when traveling to different parts of the US, I can tell exactly what someone is saying even if they pronounce words differently in their own dialect(most of the time). How should I go about learning mandarin then? Is there a simplified form of mandarin I can learn that does not require such memorization of tones? Do I have to learn the written language to help me remember the spoken word? Please help thanks.

Yes I understand the difficulty you are facing. The 4 tones are the biggest challenge for any new Chinese learners. Lucky you are learning Mandarin as it gets only 4 tones - aware that Cantonese gets 9 of those? 

Suggestion is that try to learn some very basic verbal phrases (such as "Ni Hao" and "Xie Xie") first and put that in use (practice). Gradually your ears will become more and more sensitive to those tones. That's how many people started the journey. 

I kind of feel that this is an obsolete character no longer in modern day use. I never saw it in any of the publications or websites.