Which tones are hardest, why, and where to start.
Greek speakers with no Mandarin experience scored 0.88 on T1-T2, 0.83 on T1-T4 and a lowest 0.82 on T2-T3 in an AXB discrimination task. Musically trained listeners did better on T1-T2 and T1-T4 but had no advantage on T2-T3.
Source: Apostolou (2022), Mandarin lexical tone perception by native speakers of Greek, Dalarna University (DiVA)
Group averages tell you where to look, not what you actually do. Two speakers of the same first language can differ a lot. The only way to know is to record yourself and compare.
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