This is driving me nuts! :D

人 I keep getting the tone wrong. When I listen to it it sounds exactly like the first tone, bu it is not.人 is 2nd tone.

Its funny. When I dont listen to the word, I get it wrong and when I dont I get it right.

I didn't start accurately hearing the tones they were saying for almost a year of intense studying and living in China. Be patient with yourself. Memorize the proper tone and initially use the context to understand what someone is saying. Slowly but surely you will be able to properly hear the tones someone is saying. Just work hard on speaking properly when you open your mouth to say something.

And yah, it still drives me nuts. I empathize.

I noticed that I can remember tones better if I say (or silently mouth or think) the tones after Skritter presents me with the tone marks. I don't actually listen to the recordings, so I can't judge whether the sound for 人 sounds like first or second tone.

For actually speaking Chinese - the thing is that Chinese native speakers (like speakers of any language, really) tend to abbreviate things and don't always pronounce the tones clearly. However, to Western ears, the tones might be not so clear, but to Chinese ears, there are still enough little cues (that non-native speakers don't even perceive in the beginning) to indicate the right tone.

I guess your best bet is in the beginning to exaggerate the tones. It sounds utterly ridiculous to the speaker itself, but really helps to be understood. Kind of like singing in a choir - you gotta exaggerate some things so that it sounds good to the listener.

Yeah, it can be tough. You can call up any syllables you want to listen to like this, by the way:
http://www.skritter.com/sounds?file=ren2.mp3
http://www.skritter.com/sounds?file=ren1.mp3

What's the address for neutral tones?

Replace the number with 5.
http://www.skritter.com/sounds?file=ma5.mp3

I should have been able to work that one out for myself. Thanks anyway.

We don't have very many neutral tones, unfortunately.

According to the 普通话水平测试实施纲要, when the character before a neutral tone is a first, second or fourth tone, the neutral tone is pronounced as 31 (dropping from level 3 to level 1). When the character before a neutral tone is the third tone, the neutral tone is 44. So, there are two ways to say a neutral tone depending on the tone of the immediately preceding character.
Note, for the Beijing dialect, there are 4 ways to say a neutral tone, one for each of the four tones that can precede it.

White men can't tone. Nuff said. :-)

Once you figure out tones, then you come to China and figure out that every dialect messes around with the tones leaving you completely tone-deaf again.

After sufficient toxic dialect exposure, you're back to randomly assigning tones to words, confident in the knowledge that someone, somewhere in China, can understand a few words in your sentence...

@klutz14159

Haha. Sadly somewhat true. I love listening to the tones Chinese people put on 你好。 On the street during any given day I will hear every tone in 普通话 on the second syllable, plus I will hear a few tones which I am fairly positive aren't even a part of the language.

I am not a linguist, but it in my opinion the "five" tones are only approximations of how words are commonly pronounced. The five tones gives you a very accurate approximation to reproduce the sound.

In reality the fourth tone of one word often (but not always) the same as the fourth tone on another word.