Hi, I noticed an issue with tone validation in the app.
Some words do not use the same tone as their individual characters. For example, I entered “wan3 shang4”, because the character 上 is fourth tone individually, but the app only accepts “wan3 shang5”.
I’ve encountered this with a few words, and because of that they keep coming back in my reviews even though I understand the vocabulary correctly.
Would it be possible to accept either:
the actual word pronunciation/tone change, or
the original character tones as valid answers?
Or is there a logical grammar rules that could explain the tone change ?
There isn’t some internal logic to it. There’s no way to pre-calculate if a word will use the neutral tone or not. It’s kind of like G in English - does the word use a hard G (i.e. gut, grab) or a soft G that really should be a J (i.e. gym, generation)? You’ll just have to practise enough until you internalise the correct one so it just sounds right.
And much like G - you shouldn’t practise the wrong pronunciation. If you look up 晚上 in any dictionary you’ll always find its always listed as 3rd + neutral tone (see: CFD, Dong, Purple, Wiktionary etc). It isn’t 3rd + 4th tone, so HH doesn’t accept 3+4 because that’s not how the word is pronounced. Is it annoying that these exceptions exist? Yes, very. Should they change it to accepts the wrong pronunciation? Personally I say no since that not the correct pronunciation.
That’s exactly what I meant. I learned English five years ago and had never even heard about “soft G” or “hard G,” yet I was still able to live and work in an English-speaking country , communicating and writing without problems.
I think it’s similar with Chinese: knowing every specific exception word tone or edge-case pronunciation isn’t always necessary for writing on your phone or speaking in everyday situations. That level of precision is more useful if you want to become a Chinese literature teacher, I guess.
That’s why I still think my suggestion would be a great feature for users like me: allowing us to validate certain edge-case words more easily and reducing unnecessary blocking in the repetition system.
