Chinese Words – Tone

Posted at August 13, 2009

If you’ve ever talked to someone about learning chinese, or what is difficult about learning chinese is that it’s a tonal language. That is you can say a word and depending on how you stress the begginning, middle or end it will have different meanings. This is indeed a frustrating thing about learning the language, but after a while you just have to go with it.

I’ve recently come across these words, and I was amazed at how subtle the differences are in pronunciation, but how different the final meanings are. All three of these words start with “Lao” (3rd tone), which by itself means old. From there you add the sound “Shi,” which is a very common sound in chinese.