An Open Heart, a Fortunate Blessing, and a Perceived Node of Kindness
December 10th 2009 Chinese, in the verbal form, has a little over 400 monosyllabic sounds (says John Pomfret, author of Chinese Lessons (a fantastic read)). The problem for foreigners and the untrained ear is to hear the amazingly subtle and highly intricate art of Chinese tonal speaking. Each phonetic sound has four or five tones (and then from there, the definition of the word relies entirely on context.
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