Learning Tone Language ( Is it hard ? ) In my opinion, learning tone languages is interesting ! It is like we sing a song. In fact, I am not good at singing. Apart from Chinese Mandarin, Thai and Vietnamese, I think Chinese Cantonese is challenging. I have heard that it has 9 tones. I cannot imagine how can I distinguish the difference among them. It will be my next goal. Remembering Chinese characters is one of the hardest part. I try to remember some radicals that can combine to build new words. I will take Chinese exam on Sunday, and I need to remember at least 1200 Chinese words and some grammars. I am good at listening skills but I read and write very slowly. To me, I found that Chinese is easier than Thai although it is my native language. Learning Chinese is like drawing pictures in mind. We need imagination : ) In addition, we have to remember these pictures along with the meaning and pronunciation. I realize that there are no rules to remember the symbols, so I just try to work on it and be patient. Both Chinese and Thai have tones. I know it is quite hard for people whose Native languages do not have tones. Reading Thai tones is complicated part, because the tones you see, they are not always pronounce like what you saw. However, we have some rules for reading tones ! Just take time to remember. My sister has some problems with Thai tones, if I give her some words and ask her which tones they are, she cannot answer!!!! Due to entrance examination, Thai tone part was included in Thai exam. At first, she was worried about it so she took times studying Thai tones and its rule. After that, you figured out and overcame this problem! Actually, we have learned Thai tones rules (all of them ) when we were 10-11 years old. Maybe she did not concentrate on it. I remember at first time I learned to write Thai alphabets, it was hard that I need to write beautifully and remember them. We learned it when we was 5 years old then the primary examination required students who can write Thai alphabets from start to the end. It was a hard part that we have to remember them in order like A to Z. I think learning new languages when we grew up is not the big problem, sometimes we can learn faster than little children. One thing we need is inspiration. Thanks for you correction. I would appreciate it.