good job.bro

Your very first 明天 *míngtiān / mingtian* was OK, a clear 2nd tone followed by clear 1st tone. The next three times, you seemed to be pronouncing two 1st tones in sequence: {*mīngtiān / mhingtian*}, {*mīngtiān / mhingtian*}, “I'll tell you after”, {*mīngtiān / mhingtian*}. 

明年 {*míngnián / mingnian*} was OK, but the very next word was incomprehensible: pír##?, pír##? I thought about it for a minute or two and came up with a possible candidate. You were probably trying to say 啤酒 *píjiǔ / pyijeou* "beer", but a Chinese person would not recognize the word you said.

Hanyu Pinyin's spelling conventions are very different from most European languages. In French, “J” stands for a voiced sound /ʒ/, but Piyin's “J” stands for an unaspirated sound: /tɕ/ (“Q” stands for its aspirated version /tɕʰ/ ).

For the word 啤酒“beer” *píjiǔ / pyijeou*, Pinyin's JIU hides the main vowel in the second syllable (it should be spelled ji**O**u). Using IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet), the second syllable can be written as

https://s17.postimg.org/d1qs5eaz3/jeou_IPA.png

The main vowel in 酒 is a 3rd tone /o/ (low-pitched, **looooong** and stretched out), and the superscripted /j/ and /ʊ/ are mere glides (similar to **y-** and **-w** in English. Pinyin's spelling creates the erroneous impression that 酒 *jiu* is pronounced as a combination of i and u. Gwoyeu tonal spelling always maintains the main vowel, so it will not cause such a mistake: *je**O**u*

***

COMMENT: With Romance languages like Spanish and French, you can muddle through and achieve fluency of a sort within a few months: pidgin Spanish or pidgin French (but most French people will give you dirty looks every time you make a mistake). 

This is not the case with Mandarin Chinese. The sounds are so few, but so different to what English speakers are used to, that if you merely muddle through, you will not be understood. 

You will notice that I am using two spelling systems: Hanyu Pinyin (which was designed purely for the convenience of native speakers) and Gwoyeu Luomaatzyh (GR, designed 90 years ago by a linguistic genius to accommodate both Chinese and foreigners; this system is still used sporadically in Taiwan). 

If you want to learn Chinese well, I invite you to register for a free coupon for my online course: (Chinese Sounds, A Thinker's Intro)[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc9sDMazcdrsD1ACzpdlx_lxj2HTUcP6PQg_eMGkX_gJd_Elg/viewform]

thanks to vote n support 

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