Thomas R Jefferys wrote:

correct. It's just that the Chinese have four pronounciations for every.
. Word. it changes the meaning and is something like the french having
that \ on top of the e to denote a different pronounciation.

Actually, those four pronunciations make four (or more @_@) different
words. These tonals have 'lexical significance', ie, they're used to
distingquish words. In English, the property that distinguishes "r" and "l"
has lexical significance, where that same property doesn't have lexical
significance in Japanese.

It's the same sylable (sp?), just a different tone. In English, it doesn't
matter. In Chinese, it does.

	I was referring to the Han yi ping yin. where the writing is simplified
in the component sounds rather than the root characters that give the
more complex characters their meaning. of course, word was the closest I
could think of to denote Han yi ping yin.
	If you want to know the litteral translation of the words above, it's
Han(the Han people) Yi(word/language) ping(. . .) yin (sound).
	Ps. context can change the word that is used although they might have
the same sound. however, there are about 1000+ simple characters which
are used all the publications in mainland china to simplify things
rather than using the 10,000+ traditional characters.