Struggling with tones!!! Help please?

[TseDanylo]

Ok, so I left Vietnamese for a while even though Ioved it. And now I have decided to restart the course. Well, I am still struggling with the tones :( I can pronounce all of "ma" with the tones but I still find the first tone hardest and then trying to go up or down when I don't know how high/low the first tone is. Help?

[DrJoshy]

Vietnamese is a contour tonal language. This means that tones are mainly focused on the shape of the tone rather than the pitch. That being said, here is a little description. The flat tone (no markings) is a medium flat tone and held for a moment. The falling tone à is said with a relaxed voice, very much like a sigh. The rising tone á starts high and goes very high, quickly. The low tone (dot underneath) starts very low and rises to a medium low. The ? and ~ tones can be pronounced the same way, since it is very difficult to describe the difference without saying it. It starts low, goes to very low, and rises to medium.

[Raphael_SyBo]

Yeah that's for the southern accent ^_^

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[Raphael_SyBo]

The first tone, you mean "ma"? (Ngang tone)
It's hard to describe how high a tone is... I suppose the best way for you to find out is to compare the flat high tone (ngang tone) "ma" with it's low flat tone counterpart "mà" (huyền tone)
I do not know if you're learning Mandarin as well but the ngang tone is about as high as their first tone ^_^

[N.Minh159753]

high pitch tone is means that you go from low to high and vice-versa

[TseDanylo]

What about the low pitch and falling?