Which tones are hardest, why, and where to start.
Hungarian speakers actually produce isolated Mandarin tones quite close to native. The deviations appear mainly in beginners — the concavity and pitch range of T2, T3 and T4 differ from native realizations. The real difficulty lies in tone-intonation interaction (their declarative and interrogative f0 curves overlap) and in the neutral tone.
Source: Juhász, Kornélia (2025), Az izolált mandarin kínai lexikai tónusok akusztikai elemzése kínaiul tanuló magyar anyanyelvűek ejtésében, Beszédtudomány — Speech Science 5(2), 6–43. DOI: 10.15775/Besztud.2025.2.6-43 | Juhász, Mády & Bartos (2024), Speech Prosody 2024 | Juhász & Bartos (2022), ISAPh 2022
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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