Talks about otome games, drama cds, and occasionally provides advice? Running away endlessly from my backlog of hobbies.

Ilinox

Haha, no need to apologize, but I don't think I'm going to be of much help because I grew up speaking Mandarin and so I never had to consciously learn the tones.

Hmm, if your goal is listening and not speaking though, then I actually don't think you need to stress about the tones so much because context should give you most of the information you need. There will rarely be a situation where you hear a word all by itself and have to identify it by its tone only!

I would recommend watching dramas and/or listening to audio dramas with subtitles on and then you can start channeling your inner LLM getting used to the appearance of common words next to each other. Either you'll start to differentiate tones through constant exposure and immersion or, even if you still can't differentiate them, you'll know there's no way other similar sounding words would appear in this context.

For example, if you're watching a modern drama and you hear the word "ma" in the middle of a sentence, then it's extremely unlikely to be a horse (马; mǎ) or the sentence-final particles (吗; ma or 嘛; ma), leaving you with either the subject of mom (妈; mā) or someone doing the verb of scold (骂; mà). You may hear the word hemp or numb (麻; má) in the middle of a sentence but it would likely be attached to another word.

All in all, I think you should be less harsh on yourself! Think of all the people out there who need to "hear" their native language, English, with subtitles LOL. Heck, if possible, I like to have subtitles on for everything too because it's nice to confirm what I'm hearing by seeing the words.

Haha, no need to apologize, but I don't think I'm going to be of much help because I grew up speaking Mandarin and so I never had to consciously learn the tones.

Hmm, if your goal is listening and not speaking though, then I actually don't think you need to stress about the tones so much because context should give you most of the information you need. There will rarely be a situation where you hear a word all by itself and have to identify it by its tone only!

I would recommend watching dramas and/or listening to audio dramas with subtitles on and then you can start 

 getting used to the appearance of common words next to each other. Either you'll start to differentiate tones through constant exposure and immersion or, even if you still can't differentiate them, you'll know there's no way other similar sounding words would appear in this context.

For example, if you're watching a modern drama and you hear the word "ma" in the middle of a sentence, then it's extremely unlikely to be a horse (马; mǎ) or the sentence-final particles (吗; ma or 嘛; ma), leaving you with either the subject of mom (妈; mā) or someone doing the verb of scold (骂; mà). You may hear the word hemp or numb (麻; má) in the middle of a sentence but it would likely be attached to another word.

All in all, I think you should be less harsh on yourself! Think of all the people out there who need to "hear" their native language, English, with subtitles LOL. Heck, if possible, I like to have subtitles on for everything too because it's nice to confirm what I'm hearing by seeing the words.

so i'm going to add onto the several language-related questions you've gotten (i'm saury) but i'm going to ask if you have tips or resources or pointers on a specific thing: the tones!!!! the difference between the 4 or 5 tones is so similar to me for some reason and i've tried imagining it as "it's this vowel sound in this english word" like some guides do but nope! it isn't sticking :') and i hate to admit it but it is kinda demotivating since one of my goals was to at least understand the spoken language so it's not an optional thing for me considering that objective 😔

Ilinox

Another!! language question