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RE: Is Learning Mandarin Chinese Difficult?

in #life6 years ago

Yeah that stuff still confuses me. I have heard that when you have 2 characters with the 4th tone, the first character changes to the second tone. For example, 不(bù) and 是(shì) are both 4th tone but together they become bú shì but I have seen other characters that don't follow this rule like 望而却步(wàng ér què bù) or 后缀(hòu zhuì). Can you give me some clarification on this?

Cantonese looks and sounds like a nightmare. I have been slowly learning it from time to time just for fun.

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Sadly I'm definitely not the right person to ask about learning Chinese as I'm still learning myself. But what I was told with 不 and 一 is that if they follow a 4th tone word they are pronounced 2nd tone, and if they folow a 1st, 2nd or 3rd tone word, it is pronounced 4th tone.

Cantonese and English is my thing, Mandarin I get by winging it !!!

Do you know any good resources for learning Cantonese? I am located in northern China which means hardly anybody (if at all) speaks Cantonese here.