Tomas

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I've been learning Chinese on and off for 15 years, I'm still not fluent, and I need some help. My problem is that I have weak auditory ability. When Chinese people speak fast, I don't hear the tones. For non-Chinese speakers, every sound can be pronounced 5 ways and each can mean something different. The closest we have to this in English is how different intonations of the word "what", can mean different things: For example, saying "what" hard and fast means there's a serious problem, while a long higher pitched "what" can mean surprise, and a neutral "what" means you didn't hear what was just said. Now imagine this for almost every sound — Chinese is not easy! I can read Chinese, I can type Chinese, and I can understand Chinese, but I can't speak it well because I speak it, mostly, atonally, without these tones. This happens because, again, I have weak auditory ability, and because I am a highly visual thinker. The way I learned Chinese is 100% through "pinyin". Pinyin is the method by which you convert Chinese sounds and characters into English lettering. 我是一只章鱼 means "I am an octopus". To write it on a computer, I type: wo shi yi zhi zhangyu which becomes 我是一只章鱼 The problem is that I never type: Wǒ shì yī zhǐ zhāngyú Those little accents above the letters tell me how to intonate the sounds, but since I never use them and they're never written anywhere, and since I have a bad ear for them, I never learn them. And because I never learn them, my Chinese sounds really bad and sometimes can be totally unclear, especially if there is insufficient context. So my question is, given that I have a poor auditory memory and recognition, but a strong visual memory, how do I learn Chinese tones? So far the best options I can think of are: - writing my own pinyin input app on mac to show the tones on all the characters when i'm typing - need a compute on device pair of glasses that show the pinyin over chinese characters for me (someone really needs to make this for travellers in general) Any other ideas?

If you run a brand without a moat aka...a Zuckerberg Franchise, you should pull cash aggressively out and throw it in an index fund. Don't spend money assuming it will continue forever. It's too easy for someone to dupe your site/product/ads.

I'm traveling the world for a bit, starting with China but then hopping around the globe, anywhere. Open to any adventure. No plans, only a backpack. Hoping to meet & get to know humans from all walks of life. The pic is from a long hike on the Great Wall. For me, as a fan of history, this was an epic experience. In China, first I'm visiting a few big cities & talking to engineers at the heart of China's AI revolution. After that, if feeling crazy enough, I'm hitchhiking (first time) across rural China for a few weeks. Hitchhiking because I think it's the best way to meet rural folks who I would otherwise never get the chance to meet. I hope to do the same in US and other places. I have a request, if you have a travel recommendation, fill out the form(s) below if you feel like it. Or share with folks who might have advice about such travel. Form 1 - travel recommendation: If you can, recommend to me an interesting place I should visit anywhere in the world. For this, fill out form 1. Not touristy stuff, but something off the beaten path, that tourists may not know about, but is legendary. It could be as remote as meeting a herder in the mountains who is a local legend. Asia, Middle East, Europe, India, South/North America, Africa, Australia, anywhere. In China, I'm hoping to visit maybe Heibei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan, etc, so recommendations for spots to visit are helpful. Form 2 - coffee: If you want to grab a coffee with me anywhere in the world, fill out form 2 (please don't use form 1 for that). Anyway, I hectically tossed stuff in backpack. Realizing I don't have a clear plan of any kind, which is probably the only way to do it. LFG. Love you all ❤️