four tones the

The "slowest" language, Mandarin, partly thanks to the four tones, has around 2000 possible syllables, far more than Japanese or Spanish.

语速最慢的汉语普通话有大约2000个音节，比日语和西班牙语多得多。有四个音调也是普通话语速慢的部分原因。

Mandarin, the biggest language in the Chinese family, has four tones, so that what sounds just like "ma" in English has four distinct sounds, and meanings.

汉语中最大的分支普通话有四种声调，所以英语中的“ma”在汉语中就有四种不同的发音，以及各不相同的意思。

By the end of the first semester, I was still terribly confused about the four tones of spoken Chinese, and the voices from the tape were simply a din.

第一学期末，我还是对中文四声的发音摸不着头脑，磁带里中文对话从头到尾都是哇啦哇啦。