Hello,
I’d like to suggest the idea of enabling answer using the characters directly or the pinyin without tones. I find that i’m spending a lot of time correcting minor mistakes on tones, hence a lot of time doing my reviews, while memorizing the correct tone number is less crucial to me than meaning, typing (on pinyin keyboard) and producing the prononciation in my head.
That could be an option in the settings.
Does anyone would be interested in that option too ?
Best
Not me. Tones aren’t some external extra thing that’s added TO the pronunciation, they ARE the pronunciation. Wrong tone = wrong pronunciation (and often wrong word). Pinyin without the tone isn’t pinyin - i is not ì or í, just like x is not s etc. Typing one extra number (“shi” vs “shi4”) takes almost no extra time, so not sure what’s to be gained from only testing two thirds of the pronunciation.
From all my reading and personal experience, tones are just as important as the consonants and vowels - there’s a study somewhere that shows tones are often more important that the vowels in a word for understanding (I can’t find in 5 second google but if you search you can find it). Would you accept yourself typing in 是 as only sh_4 and thinking "I know it, I just don’t remember the final”? If you wouldn’t accept that, then I don’t see why you’d accept leaving off the tone number as “ok” since it’s just as important. You can absolutely get by with incorrect tones sometimes - just like in English if you heard “I’m tired I’m going to bid”, what does “bid” mean? It’s obviously “bed” with the wrong vowel - so technically you can get by in English when messing up the vowels … doesn’t mean I’d recommend it or practise that.
(Edit: Found the study - Link to PDF - “The most interesting result is that identifying the tone of a syllable is at least as important as identifying the vowels in the syllable”)
Thanks for the imput !
Let me take an example that just happened to me :
I get tested on the character 兔 :
That’s a lot of added time considering that i know how to use 兔子 fluently in a conversation, i know my tone is far from perfect but i’m getting understood and being able to pursue conversations not only is the ultimate goal, it’s the ultimate learning tool.
That’s tiny bits of time adding over time that i’d prefer allocating to something else.
Indeed tones are crucial, i’m aware of that, but i don’t think learning tone numbers is the best way to master them in the end. It doesn’t have the efficiency of : listening them in a convo with natives / tv shows - using them in conversations and getting corrected.
The phrases i’m not completely destroying while expressing myself are mostly the ones i’ve learned by shadowing and by being corrected.
You can also know the tones while speaking the word without knowing exactly each number, like when people spit technical terms like 安卓草系统, we barely think of the tones and yet we can get it right if we used it many times.