# Do tones make Mandarin Chinese needlessly complicated?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-tones-make-mandarin-chinese-needlessly-complicated/733380>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 3, 2015, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-tones-make-mandarin-chinese-needlessly-complicated/733380 "2015-10-03T16:51:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Gretchion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8edcca/32.png) [@Gretchion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gretchion)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2015, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-tones-make-mandarin-chinese-needlessly-complicated/733380/21 "2015-10-15T01:52:21Z")

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> [@Ravenman](#):
>
> If I asked you for a hat dag, you’d probably have to take a few seconds to wonder what the hell I am asking for. You might conclude that I actually want a hot dog, and have horrible pronunciation.
> 
> That’s sort of what tones are like. Once you grasp them, you’ll understand why screwing them up makes things weird.

If I ran a hot dog stand and you asked for a hat dag, I’d understand what you mean, because of context. But I don’t run a hot dog stand, so yes, I’d be confused. I’m not going around saying random things to people in Chinese, I’m using simple sentences related to the situation. In an equivalent situation in English I feel context would help with the understanding, while the tones in Chinese seem to create an additional stumbling block.

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