英语里几乎没有同音的词，而汉语恰恰相反，汉语有太多的同音字，如果只说一个单字，人们往往不知道你在说什么。但是把这些单字连成一句话的时候，情况就要好得多了，尽管有时候也会因为音调不准影响理解。 Very few words have the same pronounciation in English, however, there are too much homophones in Chinese. Even a chinese just speaks one charactor, sometimes others could not understand him. But things are much better when you are saying a sentence not just one charactor. So dont worry aout the four tones.

I don't know. But I think it is the context that is most important. For example:- yi pi ma = a horse qi ma = ride horse ni de ma = your mother wo ma shuo = my mother says It wouldn't matter about the tones, would it?

no,Because different words have different meanings,so said wrong ,The whole meaning of the expression will be different,

It happpens sometimes. In Chinese, some words have more than one tone. For example 好 if you say it hǎo, it will be a adj, means good. if you say it hào, i will be a verb, means like.

kumostaka? hello, yeah, i'm pretty much agree with Mr. johnboon49 answered. in chinese you have only 4 tones, but in Thai we have 5 tones, and ofcuz it may took you a while to be mastered it. but only contexts is may not 100% correct. but, with the right tones and the right contexts make things much easier to make yourself be understood. well, but don't serious about the tones too much, you still can communicat with you incorrects tones, you just need to repeat twice or more in sometimes somecases. btw, dont forget to help me learn tagalog, i need your help :) good luck.