There's pitch, but it's not nearly as critical as Chinese tones. More like how in English, "the white HOUSE" and "the WHITE house" are two different things, using stress. (one being a pale domicile and the other being the President's residentence.)
's'why I've really enjoyed my TESOL classes and am looking forward to taking more. :) Amazing how much we never consciously learned about our native languages.
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I hate the way native speakers can't understand me when I get the tones wrong. >_< Reason #6398 that I'm kind of switching to Japanese.
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You do get some individual pairs of words that sound alike except for tone, but you're mostly pretty understandable even if you mess up the tones.
Phonologically, Japanese is much easier for a speaker of English than Mandarin is. The grammar though... gah! Give me Mandarin any day.