the trick is in tones: 感情 = gǎn-qíng 干净 = gān-jìng as for memorizing Chinese symbols -- just divide them into parts 熊 = 厶 plus 月 plus 匕 plus 匕 plus 火

as native chinese speaker we learn how to pronounce it firstly. normly we dont learn Pinyin until we entried Primary School. But before that, we've learnd many simple characters, thousands perhaps. Pinyin acts as a tool to consult dictionaries and learn new character. for learning new character, we used books wrote in both Pinyin and character. they include our primary svhool text book from 1 grade to 3grade and many story or scientific book. you can use the keywords 拼音读物 to find this kind of books and hope it will be helpful

i have the same problem in learning english. for example,the word " flour / flower , sauce/south , feet/fit and so on . maybe that just because i seldom chat with others in english .

Well yes there are similar.The only difference between them is Q and J. How do you Make a sound of CH in word China That is the same as Q in qing. J in word Jail that is the same as J in Jing. I hope it can help.

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