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The problem is you’re thinking about tones wrong. The tone is integral to the word, not something “extra” that’s added in. In english we would never think that the words “cat” and “bat” are confusing because we would never think something like ‘“cat” is just “at” with a “c” while “bat” is just “at” with a different initial consonant’, would we? That’s because we think of the constant as an essential part of the syllable, not something extra added in. Chinese natives are the same with tones. 汤 is tāng (not “tang”). 糖 is táng. The sound of each tone is an essential part of each word. The idea of the abstract syllable “tang” without a tone selected does not really exist.

@@mindsetnovice in Russian there are lots of words that have different meaning depending on stress placement. So it makes it very clear what is meant. Example: ду́хи - spirits, духи́ - perfume. But in Chinese, they often speak so fast, you not only aren't able to recognize the tone, but also the word :) So i think in Chinese its often about context,

@@mlsterlous Context is always a factor, but you must trust me as a foreign learner who has been living in china and speaking Chinese with natives for several year nows: Chinese people will always hear when tones are pronounced wrong, even when spoken quickly. As long as they’re half paying attention, they will pick up on it immediately, 100% guaranteed. For example, I teach math in a chinese high school, mostly teaching in chinese, and anytime I slip up on a tone, even slightly, students will notice and repeat my mistake (because it’s funny to them). Another point to makes is that chinese speakers when speaking very fast will drop certain consonants and distort a few vowels, but tones will largely be preserved. So yeah, tone mistakes really stick out like a sore thumb to natives. I don’t know russian, so no comment on that comparison (i assume it’s valid, although perhaps not to the same degree as chinese, where literally around 99.9% of words are distinguished primarily by tone). But regardless, if you want to learn Chinese you have to understand it on its own terms. And by far the most critical is to convince yourself that the tones are more *more fundamental* to the identity of a word than even the consonants and vowels. (Although chinese natives will think of all three as roughly “equal” in some sense, any learner of chinese whose native language isn’t tonal *absolutely* must overcompensate by thinking of tones as being the most important.) Anyway the last thing we want to do as foreign learners is to come up with excuses that lead to avoiding the importance of learning tones well. Can you imagine a learner of english talking about how “vowels aren’t important” or “consonants aren’t important” because “Americans talk fast, so it’s actually mostly about context?” Learning to understand unclear/fast speech (using context in particular) is an important skill, but a prerequisite for doing so is already having a good handle on the basics.

​@@mindsetnovice I wonder what's you opinion on moments, when they speak so fast that they even almost skip some words. For example, i'm watching a Chinese drama here on youtube, and at one point she said "我从昨天下午两点到现在还没吃过饭呢". And she almost skipped 昨天 and 现在 😀 Doesn't matter how many times i listen to this again and again, i can't 听得懂 what the heck she is saying (except the last part of course which is 没吃过饭呢). You can paste the video title into searchbox, there is my comment where i talk about it and timestamp for that moment is 7:59. Video title >>> Nothing But Thirty 02 | 三十而已 02 （#江疏影、#童瑶、#杨玏、#毛晓彤、#李泽锋）三位三十岁都市女性奋斗与成长的励志故事 PS: now, after listening to it about 100 times, i slowly recognize the word 现在 😄

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