Changes in intonation made while enunciating a word which relate meaning
我不知道
Yes, you can understand what they’re saying. And that’s the main problem with those insipidly awful shows.
四聲
As in 媽麻馬罵
I take those over Keeping up with the Kardashians.
I choose “neither of the above.”
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I thought that was a chengyu for a second.
It can be if you really want it to.
“Mother is numb, the horse scolds”. Deep
She’s numb from being in the saddle too long, which is why the horse is complaining.
General Tang’s mother, noted for her overbearing nature, was returning to camp one night. She was so drunk she went silently in five circles around the camp, causing her usually placid horse to howl in anger. This is used to describe an unusual double reverse in circumstances with a comic twist.
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mamamama
@tempogain, did you write this?
- วลีไม่มีความหมาย ใช้สำหรับจดจำวรรณยุกต์ทั้งสี่เสียงในภาษาจีนกลาง
ไม่รู้
mamamama
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Yeah, what he said. I don’t mind people speaking to me in English even if they’re only doing it for a bit of practice. And frankly I’m more likely to understand them if they do (exception: they can’t actually speak English).
I can remember when I first started learning, there was an Indian girl in the class who simply couldn’t do it. We were all pretty awful, of course, so nobody was laughing, but she seemed to be tone-deaf and pronounced everything as third tone. She left in despair after a couple of classes.
tbh I still have a bad time with second and third tone. 
I continue to be amazed by my inability to recognize what tone something is upon hearing it. Apparently I mimic the sound fairly well, so if I hear first tone and ape it I’ll use first tone, but if my logical brain gets involved in the intermediate step of “Determine the tone, and then think about which tone it is, and say it with that tone”, I’m doomed. If I’m reading with tone marks, I’m … OK. Not good, but better than my tone-deafness would suggest.
I’ve always wondered if this involves the same broken mental pathways that had an elementary school chorus teacher asking me to just pretend I was singing.
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This is your Western genes expressing themselves. I had the same problem (lazy second tone) during my early Mandarin years.
You can say some funny things with the incorrect tone.
Malay Chinese tones are pretty hard for me. Even harder than most mainland Chinese tone usage. They’re very flat with their tones.