They are pretty much the same thing…horses for courses. The trick is not the characters but your ability to ASSOCIATE the character with the given sound.
I’ve been in Taiwan for a year working full time / studying chinese part time, and am still pretty bad at recognizing tones. It seems that I do better to try and make sense of words without paying too much attention to the tones themselves and just pay attention to the way the words sound and try to make the connection. Tones are merely hints. For the most part, spending effort memorizing words is way more valuable than trying to pick out tones in conversations. The more words you know, the more connections you can make, the easier it is to hear the tones, etc etc. Plus, a lot of native speakers don’t even use all the right tones anyways. Especially the older generation.
In conclusion: Turn off the radio, pick up flash cards. I am quite sure that no matter how much you listen to the radio, you could have been further by memorizing 1 word a day. At least then you are guaranteed to know 200 more words by the time you get to TW.[/quote]
Glad I started off an interesting discussion.
Rightly or wrongly, I have focused on recognising and pronouncing tones. I used to go on a site linked to from here where you could test yourself. I hadn’t been on there for ages then I tested myself again the other day and found I’d improved a lot. When I typed up the ying1wei4 word I was working from memory, having not heard it for a few hours, so I was guessing really, and trusting the wise minds here to be able to guess what I meant.
I’m trying really hard to learn ‘word and tone’, rather than just word, because I know I’ll have to learn the tone eventually if I want to make any sense, so I might as well learn it from the outset. Plus, the musicality of the language is something that tickles me.
I am using flashcards too, and Android apps, and PAVC Book 1, and Chinesepod mp3 downloads. I even have a book called ‘Fun with Chinese Characters’ that sits next to my toilet. 
My progress is slow but thorough. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to devote to study as I work full time, have children and run the house (and am trying to get some writing work going as supplementary income for when we move to Taiwan). Listening to the radio, watching soaps etc. is just my way of using up spare head-time in a potentially beneficial way.
Oh don’t get me wrong knowing how to recognize tones is extremely important, but the more words and phrases you know the easier becomes to spot the subtle variations when trying to pick out the tones from conversation, so you shouldn’t worry about it TOO much.
I’ve been in Taiwan for a year working full time / studying chinese part time, and am still pretty bad at recognizing tones. It seems that I do better to try and make sense of words without paying too much attention to the tones themselves and just pay attention to the way the words sound and try to make the connection. Tones are merely hints. For the most part, spending effort memorizing words is way more valuable than trying to pick out tones in conversations. The more words you know, the more connections you can make, the easier it is to hear the tones, etc etc. Plus, a lot of native speakers don’t even use all the right tones anyways. Especially the older generation.
In conclusion: Turn off the radio, pick up flash cards. I am quite sure that no matter how much you listen to the radio, you could have been further by memorizing 1 word a day. At least then you are guaranteed to know 200 more words by the time you get to TW.[/quote]
Glad I started off an interesting discussion.
Rightly or wrongly, I have focused on recognising and pronouncing tones. I used to go on a site linked to from here where you could test yourself. I hadn’t been on there for ages then I tested myself again the other day and found I’d improved a lot. When I typed up the ying1wei4 word I was working from memory, having not heard it for a few hours, so I was guessing really, and trusting the wise minds here to be able to guess what I meant.
I’m trying really hard to learn ‘word and tone’, rather than just word, because I know I’ll have to learn the tone eventually if I want to make any sense, so I might as well learn it from the outset. Plus, the musicality of the language is something that tickles me.
I am using flashcards too, and Android apps, and PAVC Book 1, and Chinesepod mp3 downloads. I even have a book called ‘Fun with Chinese Characters’ that sits next to my toilet. My progress is slow but thorough. Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to devote to study as I work full time, have children and run the house (and am trying to get some writing work going as supplementary income for when we move to Taiwan). Listening to the radio, watching soaps etc. is just my way of using up spare head-time in a potentially beneficial way.[/quote]
Good on you for focusing on tones. They’re very important. Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as a toneless Chinese word (except for some grammaticalised words). You might want to spend some time listening to good, but level appropriate material. Here are some links:
Can’t go wrong with MIT – ocw.mit.edu/courses/foreign-lang … /readings/
I believe Chinesepod newbie lessons are free – www.chinesepod.com
Oh don’t get me wrong knowing how to recognize tones is extremely important, but the more words and phrases you know the easier becomes to spot the subtle variations when trying to pick out the tones from conversation, so you shouldn’t worry about it TOO much.[/quote]
Gotcha. 
[quote=“archylgp”][
Good on you for focusing on tones. They’re very important. Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as a toneless Chinese word (except for some grammaticalised words). You might want to spend some time listening to good, but level appropriate material. Here are some links:
Can’t go wrong with MIT – ocw.mit.edu/courses/foreign-lang … /readings/
I believe Chinesepod newbie lessons are free – chinesepod.com[/quote]
That MIT link looks awesome. Thanks!
I already have some Chinesepod mp3s downloaded. You get a free trial period these days, which has now run out for me and I stupidly missed the opportunity they gave me for another one. I think I’ll get another set of newbie stuff anyway. It’s very good for listening to when driving. There are already some differences between Chinesepod Mandarin and PAVC Mandarin, though. Nothing too major but I can see it might be a problem to continue using Chinesepod if you’re living in Taiwan.
just by the way the wei in “yinwei” can be fourth or second tone. I pronounce yinwei as a first and a second tone which is also how the Oxford dic. shows it. I’ll leave it to one of our cunning linguists to explain whats going on here.
edit: the oxford has it fourth in the chinese half of the dic. and 2nd in the english part…curiouser and, um, curiouser…
Mostly I hear “wei” in the 4th tone. When I hear it in the 2nd tone, depending on the context and the speaker, it sounds forced, pompous or mainlandy.
who you callin’ forced, pompous and mainlandy?
but i’m right aren’t I that for some reason it can take either tone?