Tone Changing

 

A few of you had problems with the 1st tone and 4th tone, which is weird since these two tones are the easiest. I think this is because you're confused by the tone changing rules. Please see the following YoYo Chinese Youtube video. She does a good job explaining tone changing. It's a little long (45 minutes) but she made it fun to watch. (And she's easy on the eyes😍）

I noticed that the Pinyin publications indicated tones in the ways of how you're supposed to read them, not necessarily the default tones of each character. As a result, if you're just learning from the Pinyin publications, you may learn the wrong tones of some characters. Just something to watch out for.