Well, it turns out that Chinese ear is very adept in figuring out what you want to say despite the fact that you mangle the tomes. Some of that stems from the fact that depending on which Chinese language is your native tongue you produce anywhere from 3 to 7 (or is it 9) different tones. The result is that when speaking Mandarin (4.5 tones :-)) native Chinese, who are not native Mandarin speakers confuse tones themselves. Now then, Chinese willy-nilly depend on context to figure out what is it that you are talking about.

Sure, there are situations when the need for correct tones are absolutely necessary, e.g., a sudden switch of topic in the conversation, uttering an isolated phrase and so on. In such a case, a native who said it wrong will try to provide a context to make the situation clear.

When I started learning Chinese I found that the endless repetitions of a word was utterly boring and demoralizing and so early on I decided to ignore the tones. This was easy because Chinese friends would not correct a foreigner if s/he makes a mistake. They would only intervene if they truly do not understand.

Instead of studying tones I focused on expanding my vocabulary. It was very gratifying to see that my ability to converse grew rather quickly. The tones came later. I started to appreciate their importance as my ability to communicate became more complex. When it came to expressing more subtle shades of meaning and communicate more precisely it became truly important to say things “right”.

Chinese teacher’s say that it is important to learn tones up front because it is difficult later to unlearn the mistakes. Perhaps so, I did not find that so difficult. Maybe it is because I did not fight the tones. If someone corrected me then I dutifully repeated the correction, but until recently i could not tell which word was which tone. I say “until recently” because, I must admit about 2-3 months ago I got onto a campaign of systematically expanding my vocabulary and at that point it seemed ridiculous not to identify the tones.

I found this approach a more rewarding one and something that one should consider in teaching Chinese.

I will now retreat into my cave put on a hard hat, raise my shield to protect myself from the sharp and smelly objects being thrown in my direction.

My Chinese teacher often stops and points out where our language isn’t flowing (pauses and emphasis is wrong) so we don’t sound too robotic and alien-like. That being said, I’d rather sound a bit alien than get my tones wrong and have people just stare at me blankly which sadly happens more often than I would like.