Comments on Profile Post by Deep Funk

But pinyin makes you much easier to type Chinese! I really hate any shape-based input methods..

Learning Mandarin on DuoLingo here. Sometimes the "pinyin" is completely wrong without any context. French grammar gives you head-aches. Wrong "pinyin" makes you swear like a grumpy chef...

Agreed. It could be useful phonetic tool, but pronunciation of pinyin alphabet could be drastically different from any of western languages. Indeed I believe this applies any kind of phonetic tools for any languages.

Tricky thing about pinyin is that the actual pronunciation can change with context, e.g., two "second tones" in a row.

The thing about tones is you need to get to a flow. If a mandarin learner is slowly pronouncing every word with its standalone tone it is harder to be understood IME. Another thing that those who grew up only speaking non-tonal languages can have a hard time understanding is that tone is just as important for meaning as pronunciation. Sometimes moreso.

Just a couple of things that I have learned from visiting and living in China on and off since 1996.