How To Learn A Tonal Language

Shane, who's learning Chinese and Thai, asked me a simple but challenging question in an iTunes review: “What's your approach to learning tonal languages? How do you go about it?“

It's a brilliant question because tonal languages are genuinely tough. For those unfamiliar, tonal languages – many found across Asia – differ dramatically from English and other Western languages.

It's not just about pronouncing the word correctly; there's also a specific tone that's implicit in the meaning that you can't separate from the word itself. Say the word without the tone and it means absolutely nothing.

So, with that in mind, here's how to learn a tonal language.

If you prefer watching videos to reading, check out the video version of this post at the top of the page. Otherwise, here's what you'll learn in this post:

Why Most Advice About How To Learn A Tonal Language Is Wrong

I know one tonal language well – Cantonese, which I learnt a couple of years ago (it's a bit rusty now).

When I was learning Cantonese, the hardest thing for me was mastering those tones. They're all over the place – up and down – and as I said, you simply can't separate the tones from the meaning.

Here's some terrible advice I once heard: “If you want to learn Cantonese, it's really easy. Just go into Chinatown and start saying stuff. Don't worry about the tones—just say some words from your dictionary. Ignore the tones; they'll understand you anyway.”

I think this is absolutely dreadful advice, and I wouldn't recommend doing that at all. I believe it's essential to get familiar with the tones right from the beginning. Let me show you exactly how to do that.

Your Foundation For Learning A Tonal Language

The first thing you need to do when learning a tonal language is ensure you understand the tones on a technical level.

Here's why this matters: if you don't understand them technically, they're going to seem impossible – far too out of reach.

Here's what I recommend:

1. Get a textbook or visit a Wikipedia article about your target language
2. Read up on the tones systematically – how many are there? What do they sound like?
3. Spend time getting used to them – make some notes, draw some diagrams
4. Make sure you understand it on an intellectual level

However, that's the end of what I'd do from what you might call a “bottom-up approach” – looking at the nuts and bolts and building up from there. Everything else I'd do from then on would be a top-down approach to learning tones.

The Top-Down Approach To Learning A Tonal Language

Your main challenge in learning tones is becoming familiar with them.

In a previous post I shared this fantastic quote from Kató Lomb: “You don't learn a language, you get used to it.” Never was this more true than with tones.

Here's the thing with tones: you can practise them till you're blue in the face, but it's not until a certain amount of time has passed that you're actually going to feel like you really understand them and you're confident with them.

You have to be prepared to let time pass – two to three months of study – for you to become familiar with them, rather than expecting to understand them and get them perfect from the beginning.

What you'll find is that if you're prepared to give it time, they start to become second nature.

Just like with German, where you have to learn whether every new word is masculine, feminine, or neuter, when you start learning words in Chinese, you're going to automatically attach a tone to them.

The tone becomes implicit, so you won't have to think about it too much – but it does take time.

Specific Techniques For Mastering Tonal Languages

Following on from this top-down approach, here are the specific things I recommend you do:

1. Listen To Lots of Dialogues Every Day

Make sure you've got a textbook with dialogues (like an Assimil-type series or Teach Yourself) and listen to the dialogues over and over.

If possible, try to repeat them as well – speak them aloud so you can actually practise producing what they're saying. Start comparing yourself and try to get it as accurate as you can.

It's the daily listening that's going to build this critical familiarity. If you're not listening, you won't get used to the tones.

2. Work With A Tutor Right From The Beginning

Start speaking immediately because tones aren't just something you can understand passively from listening – you need to be producing them as well.

Even if you're just starting with basics like “hello,” “good morning,” and “how are you,” the tutor can correct you from the start.

Don't wait a long time to start using the tones because it's going to be much more difficult to build confidence and correct mistakes if you wait longer.

Here's what I did with Cantonese:

• I'd write down lots of new vocabulary from conversations with my tutor
• I'd always mark the tone (I used the Pinyin system – English transliteration using the Roman alphabet)
• When I later went to learn these words, I'd make sure to learn the vocabulary with the tones

Right from the start, you're ensuring every new word you learn comes with a tone and you're learning it with that tone from the beginning.

3. Work With Full Sentences, Not Just Single Words

This is absolutely key for tones because tones will change from one word to the next. If you put two Chinese characters together, for example, the way you'd pronounce the tone on one character might change when combined with another.

The point is that whilst you can break tones down and understand them intellectually on a separate level, what you really need to do is speak in full sentences – as complete as you can – and learn how the tones operate in those full sentences.

This quickly builds your understanding of how tones function in normal, regular speech. This is very different from bottom-up advice that says “just learn one Chinese character and its tone, then the next character and its tone.”

You can start like that if you want, but the real progress comes from learning full sentences and seeing how tones behave from the beginning of the sentence to the end.

4. Learn Mini-Speeches For Deliberate Practice

One brilliant way to practise full sentences is by learning mini-speeches.

Here's what I'd often do: write out something I wanted to say—”Hi, my name is Olly, I'm from the UK, I'm 43″—figure out how to say that and ask my teacher to help with pronunciation and getting the tones right.

Why this works so well: Because you've memorised it, you get the opportunity to practise and rehearse without worrying about remembering the content itself. That means you can focus on the tones on a much more deliberate level than you could if you're always having to say new things and understand responses.

This gives you what I call a “memory of success” – if you can say something confidently with accurate tones, you get a feeling of what it's like to speak with accurate tones. This has a snowball effect that carries on to everything else you do.

Your Action Plan: How To Learn A Tonal Language With Ease

In summary, here's your complete approach:

1. Understand how the tones work technically (spend time with textbooks and resources)
2. Focus on doing real things with the language:
   • Listen to dialogues daily
   • Work with a teacher from the beginning
   • Speak as much as possible
3. Ensure the tones you're learning come from language you actually want to use
4. Be patient – give yourself 2-3 months to become truly familiar with the tones

Learning tones certainly isn't easy – it's one of the most difficult things about learning another language. But Shane, I'm sure you're going to have great success with both Chinese and Thai.

Remember, you don't learn tones through intellectual understanding alone – you get used to them through consistent, daily practice with real language in context. Start today, be patient with yourself, and trust the process.

Ready to start your tonal language journey? Pick one dialogue from your textbook, listen to it three times, then try to repeat it aloud. That's your first step towards mastering tones – and it begins right now.

How To Learn A Tonal Language FAQ

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.